


Bracae Temporis

by Donna_Immaculata



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Book: Night Watch, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, The Trousers of Time, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 14:34:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10743681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata
Summary: Sometimes history repeats itself. Not necessarily in that order.





	1. Prison

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: This is a _dark_ take on Night Watch, so there’s going to be character death.
> 
> But: This is a dark take on _Night Watch_ , so there’s going to be timey-wimey which might take care of the character death.

_This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren't careful you'd go down the wrong leg._

_And Vimes ran on, not fighting, but hacking, ducking strokes without seeing them, blocking attacks without turning his head, letting the ancient senses do their work. Someone was slicing towards young Sam; Vimes brought a sword down on the arm in true self-defence._

The arm fell, blood spurted forth, and the attacker, carried forward by his momentum and by the boiling heat in his blood that made him forget everything, even searing pain, raised his other arm and rammed a dagger into Sam’s neck, all the way to the hilt. Blood gushed from the boy’s mouth, and behind him a tall, robed figure rose like the shadow of a tomb.

The world went black.

_It’ll come when you call…_

With a roar, Vimes struck the man down, slashing and stabbing in the centre of a widening circle. He wasn’t an enemy, he was nemesis.

And then, reality caught on. Time slowed, greyed, stretched like a rubber band, and when it snapped back, it propelled Vimes through the air like a catapult. Then, there was just the blackness of the deepest sleep, followed by pain as he hit the floor.

He lay, panting, foaming, his blood curdling with terror, and then there were footsteps. Voices, a whole huge cacophony of them, whispering and shouting in turn, the words chopped up and indistinguishable until a phrase made it past Vimes’ ringing ears all the way to his brain. “Go and count its tentacles.”

“You go!”

There was silence, and then one voice, slightly more reasonable than the others, said. “Hem-hem, Archchancellor, this appears not to be a thing from the Dungeon Dimensions.”

“What does it appear to be, pray tell?”

“A man. In the nude.”

“A nude man? What is a nude man doing on my library floor?”

“Could it be the Librarian? Perhaps somebody found a way of turning him back into a man.”

“Ook?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, man! This is not the Librarian. This is a stranger, and he’s flaunting his… his _bits_ in my library!”

“He is prone.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“He’s lying on his front. His bits, such as they are, are tucked in beneath him.”

_Such as they are?_

Vimes groaned and raised his head. Pointy shoes, a robe – ye gods, a true wizard’s robe, stars, sequins, glittering tentacular patterns and all – and then a beard. Above the beard, the tall pointy hat. Between beard and hat, a face. And between that face and his own face, an outstretched wizard’s staff, which indeed had a knob at the end. _A blunt instrument_ , submitted Vimes’ copper brain.

“You’re not Ridcully,” Vimes rasped.

“What did he say?”

“That you’re not… ridiculous, Archchancellor?”

“Damn right I’m not! Anyone who thinks otherwise can hop and live in the pond behind the greenhouse.”

“He’s not saying that you are.”

“Why not turn him into a frog anyway? It would be doing him a kindness, look at him. He’s nude and slimy already.”

“I think that’s blood and grime.”

“You can’t turn me into a frog. Wizards are prohibited from using magic against civilians under the act-”

“Prohibited by whom?” the wizard boomed. “By WHOM?” Energy crackled at the end of the staff, flowing into the knob, and for a fleeting moment Vimes thought: Why the hell not? Let them turn me into a frog. Life would be so much easier in the pond behind the greenhouse.

With another groan, he raised himself up on his trembling arms, his eyes never leaving the staff. If he made a feint to the right, dodged to left and grabbed it, he could bring the wizard down. And he would be holding a large wooden club. He’d fought with worse weapons, even though rarely with worse odds.

“Another frog is the last thing we need,” said a voice that Vimes had begun to think of as a friend[1]. “The blasted things breed like mad, and I am sure the alligator infestation is due to them. They come in search of food.”

“In Quirm, they eat frogs.” This voice was plump and greasy and slightly wistful.

“I’m not eating any of those buggers,” said the Archchancellor, who was rapidly losing interest in Vimes. “I know who they used to be.”

“Let’s hand him over to the Watch. They have ways of dealing with the likes of him.”

“What, nude men?”

The bickering started again, but Vimes didn’t hear any of it, because light exploded in front of him, and then – darkness.

When he came to, he was no longer in the library, and nobody was pointing staffs at him and threatening him with frogs. It was only a marginal improvement, as two burly guards had his upper arms in their vice grips and were dragging him along a corridor that he recognised. His knees and shins scraped over rough stones and he kept his head down, moving nothing but his eyes to see as much of his surroundings as possible. Could this really be the Tanty? If so, he might be in luck. If he was back in his own time, the Tanty would be manned by… _But would it? Would it? Even though- No, don’t think about it, that never happened. It can’t have happened. You’re here, you’re alive, right? That means that he- that I could not have died then._

_But I saw me die._

_You also saw your wife pregnant, and then that never happened, either. Just because you saw something, just because you remember something, it does not mean that it is real._

The groan that tore from his throat this time was one of mental anguish rather than physical agony. His soul was rubbed raw, the abrasions on his skin were nothing in comparison. A door creaked, keys rattled, another door opened, the pressure around his arms lifted and, with a kick to the ribs, he was catapulted into a heap of straw.

The door slammed shut, and darkness enveloped him again.

This time, the darkness was not inside his head, but before his eyes. Vimes pressed his eyelids shut, willing his night vision to build up. He knew there was someone else there. Every cell in his body, each hair follicle sensed the predatory presence. Vimes knelt, leaning against the wall with one shoulder, his mind racing.

“Good evening.” The voice shot through him with the force of a thunderbolt. Surely not-

“I did not expect any company tonight,” the voice continued in soft tones and with a faint Genuan accent that was unexpected. “I was expressly told that the condemned cell would be exclusively at my disposal. I wasn’t prepared to share it with a nude man on the last night of my life.” A brief pause, during which Vimes desperately attempted to gather his scattered wits. “Or are you meant to be a… treat? His Lordship should know that I don’t share his taste. If I’m in the company of a nude person, I prefer them not to be bleeding and hurting.”

“Your lordship,” Vimes croaked. There was a change of texture in the darkness, which gradually became man-shaped. The familiar features emerged: pale face and black hair, and icy blue eyes that glinted like shards of diamonds. An elegant eyebrow rose.

“Have we met?”

Vimes barked out a laugh. “Not yet.”

There was the sound of a match being struck, the smell of sulphur, and a candle was lit. Vetinari, sitting cross-legged on what appeared to be a velvet cushion, leaned back with his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, in a gesture so familiar to Vimes that it almost made him weep.

“Not yet,” Vetinari repeated. “Interesting. And yet here you are, and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I do not believe that you are insane.”

“I might be heading that way,” Vimes said darkly. Something that had been screaming at him from the churning whirlpool of his mind finally made itself heard. “The _condemned cell_?”

“Quite so,” Vetinari said. Something rustled by his elbow, there was movement in the shadows, and then Vetinari’s hand came up holding a glass. “Would you care for wine?”

“I do not drink,” Vimes coughed, his throat suddenly parched, “wine.”

“Neither do I, ordinarily.” Vetinari raised the glass to his lips. “But these are extraordinary circumstances.”

“What crime are you accused of?”

“Treason.” Vetinari drank some more. “And you?”

“I’ve absolutely no idea. I didn’t even know I was condemned.” Vimes looked around, peering into the shadows. For a condemned cell, his surroundings were luxuriously furnished. There were several cushions in the corner that served as Vetinari’s bed[2]; and on a low shelf, so as to be handy, were a notepad and a neat row of books. A plate, knife and fork sat next to the floor grille. “They spoil you, sir.”

“Oh that.” Vetinari waved a thin hand. “I had that brought to me.”

“Which treason charge is it?” If he found that out, he might be able to pinpoint the year. As far as he could tell in the candle light, Vetinari looked about his own age, but that didn’t say much. That bastard had looked pretty much the same for years, if not decades. There might be something in that vampire rumour after all. “The dragon one or the Klatch one?”

“Dragon?” Vetinari sounded mildly surprised. “Which dragon?”

“The huge bloody dragon that tried to burn down my city!” Vimes was as good as shouting now, and he knew it.

“Ah, that dragon. That was years ago.” Vetinari eyed him, one finger pressed to his mouth. “ _Your_ city?” he asked, his voice light as air.

Vimes ignored it. “What about the war with Klatch?”

“Which one? There have been so many. In fact, there is one now, even though they call it ‘armed conflict’, probably to fool the second Horseman. I hear he is not the brightest.”

“The one over Leshp,” Vimes croaked and coughed again.

Vetinari held out the glass to him. “Are you sure you don’t want to drink?”

“Not wine.”

“Water, then?”

“Please.”

He heard water being poured, and then the Patrician was handing him a glass. No, not the _Patrician_. Or was he? He had to ask outright.

“Look,” he twisted in the straw, turning so that he could face Vetinari more directly, but without putting himself unduly on display. There was no call for flashing the man. “Who are you and what’s going on here?”

“I could ask you the exact same question. You, for one, seem to have a vague idea who I am.”

Attempting to give himself time to think, Vimes fell back on the good old stand-by. “Sir.” His hand saluted smartly, there was nothing he could do to stop it.

“You are decided not to answer?”

“What good would it do? You’ll be dead at dawn.”

“Quite so. Still, you could satisfy my… idle curiosity. I could put in a good word for you, perhaps. I might be condemned to be hanged by my neck until dead, but I am not entirely without influence among the… guards and guardians of this city.”

Vimes’ body coiled, his lungs expanded and burned. “You knew? You bloody well knew, didn’t you?”

“Not until, oh, two seconds ago,” said Vetinari. “Not until you called me ‘sir’. I recognised the tone, I recognised the gesture. I’d seen it before.”

“Tell me, then.”

Vetinari treated him to one of those looks that went a little bit too long and were designed to discomfit the lookee. In his present state of mind, however, Vimes was longing for discomfort. Discomfort was his comfortable friend and would be a much better companion than the twin demons of terror and agony who had taken his soul hostage. Vetinari must have read it in his face, because he complied.

“Then I'll recall the day I was sent on an urgent errand,” he said. “I had to save the life of a man. Not a usual errand for an Assassin although, in fact, I had already saved it once before.” He gave Vimes a quizzical look.

“You'd shot a man who was aiming a crossbow?” said Vimes.

“An inspired guess! Yes. I have an eye for the…unique. But now I was fighting time. The streets were blocked. Chaos and confusion were everywhere, and it wasn't as if I even knew where he could be found. In the end, I took to the rooftops. And thus I came at last to Cable Street, where there was a different sort of confusion.”

“Tell me what you saw,” said Vimes.

“I saw a man called John Keel... vanish. And later, I saw him dead.”

“Really,” said Vimes.

“I joined the fight. I snatched up a lilac bloom from a fallen man and, I have to say, held it in my mouth. I'd like to think I made some difference; I certainly killed four men, although I take no particular pride in that. They were thugs, bullies. No real skill. Besides, their leader had apparently fled, and what morale they had had gone with him. The men with the lilac, I have to say, fought like tigers. Not skilfully, I'll admit, but when they saw that their leader was down they took the other side to pieces. Astonishing.

And then, afterwards, I took a look at John Keel. It _was_ John Keel. How could there be any question about that? His wounds looked somewhat old, I thought. And death, as we know, changes people. Yet I remember wondering: this much? So I put it down as half a mystery, and today… sergeant… we find the other half of the mystery. Put together, the two halves make for a rather large mystery indeed.”

“You must have a very good memory to remember events that happened-” Damn! Vetinari had not told him _when_ , had he? He’d almost slipped up there; he really had to focus if he wanted to-

Wanted to what? Get out of here alive? Hah!

Vetinari was still watching him. Vimes cleared his throat. “This is a very interesting story.”

“Isn’t it just.”

They sat in silence for a while. Vetinari was the first to break it.

“I would appreciate hearing your side of the story, sergeant.”

“Sir.”

Vetinari smiled. “I see,” he said. “Would you like your dinner now?”

“What?” Vimes stared at him.

“I see Trsk and his people are on their way.” He nodded at the grille. Down, in the darkness of the drain, shadows darted to and fro, rathandling a number of items that looked like cutlery, napkins, ropes, parchment rolls, candles and sundry. The Patr- Vetinari leaned down, pulled out a bundle wrapped in cloth and undid the knot. "We seem to have cheese, chicken legs, celery, a piece of rather stale bread and a nice bottle, oh, a nice bottle apparently of Merckle and Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce. Sorry about this, sergeant. They can't read, you see.”

“You are waited on by rats?” His mouth said the words automatically as an old memory stirred. The most horrible sensation of vertigo descended on him and he closed his eyes, listening to words that rose like ghosts from his past to mock him.

“They help out, you know. They're not really very efficient, I'm afraid. It's their paws. And they can’t read, which explains the Very Famous Brown Sauce.”

Vimes felt a scream build up. An hour ago[3], he’d watched himself die. He’d been hurled through time, he’d been thrown in prison, he might or might not be hanged in the morning, and he had no idea what was happening or _when_.

“If I asked you an outright question, sir,” he said through clenched teeth. “Would you give an outright answer?”

Vetinari smiled. “What do you think?”

Vimes punched him. His fist smashed into the flesh of the Assassin’s palm. Vetinari moved like a snake[4]. He was holding Vimes’ hand in a tight grip, and his eyes glittered.

“Do not do this again,” he said, and Vimes expected a serpent’s tongue to flick from between his lips. “I appreciate that you are in a state of shock, and my curiosity is roused enough to let you live. I will therefore not be so impolite as to inhume you with this fork.” Something glittered in his other hand as he held the potentially deadly implement up. “We are locked up together, we should be able to trust each other with our lives at the very least, don’t you think, sergeant? I do not wish to die any second sooner than tomorrow at dawn.”

_The beast snarled. The red mist that was its breath rose behind Vimes’ eyes._

_Send it back into the dark._

“I killed werewolves with my bare hands,” he growled, putting his weight into his arm, pushing against Vetinari’s hand to force the man’s arm back against the wall.

Vetinari resorted to sarcasm. “In the nude?”

“YES!”

The echo of his roar bounced between the walls like a startled rabbit, and then silence. Vetinari loosened his grip and Vimes pulled his arm back and massaged his fist. Those skeletal fingers were like a claw forged from dwarf iron.

“It appears we are at an impasse.”

Vimes merely growled. That seemed to sum up his feelings nicely.

The Assassin peeled himself off the wall. Vimes tensed, but Vetinari merely pulled off his outer robe and handed it to Vimes. “Please.” And as Vimes didn’t move, he added, “For my sake, if not your own.”

The robe was softer and warmer than Vimes expected; it appeared that this alternative-present Vetinari attached greater importance to creature comforts than the other one. Then Vimes’ copper instincts kicked in and he examined the garment more closely. Outwardly, it was the familiar nondescript black that Vetinari customary wore. But the lining was made of something exquisitely soft. There were pockets, which Vimes felt tentatively. Vetinari was watching him.

“I have been thoroughly searched, sergeant, and divested of what you might call my tools of the trade. If, of course, one would refer to my profession as a ‘trade’, which one most emphatically does not.”

“Yeah, right.” Vimes’ fingers explored the folds of the fabric. Vetinari’s face was blank. That mind behind that face must still be the same, even if the world around the man was not. And how did Vetinari tick? Like that damn clock of his, that’s how, tick, tock... ticktocktick, tock, tock… tick, designed to turn your brain into porridge.

Vimes’ brain had pretty much turned to porridge as it was, but if he stirred it with the spoon of his determination, he might find a solid lump there which… yeah, that metaphor had run away from him. _Focus on what you know._

And what he knew was that, with Vetinari, everything was a test.

He pulled his hands out from the depths of the robe and slid them down the front instead, along the row of buttons, down to the hem and then all the way up to the collar. His knuckles hit the clasp and his hand stilled. It was not an impressive clasp, not sharp-edged silver that could be turned into a dagger in the right hands; it was made from something fairly soft, polished wood perhaps, and the edges were carefully rounded. Vimes thought of the soft, warm lining under the nondescript exterior, and his fingertip tingled as he carefully slid it over the scratched surface. There was something, like a hairline crack, and when he inserted his nail just so and pried it open-

The arrogant gleam of _sharpness_ and death in miniature; and then a vial, so small that Vimes’ broad fingertips fumbled with it. Vetinari leaned in and picked both up in a pincer-like grip. “I’ll take this now, if you don’t mind. Well done, sergeant. I will gladly recommend you for the Palace Guard, you would make it to captain in no time."

“Who will listen to the recommendation of a man about to be hanged for treason?”

“The Palace is susceptible to _sensible_ advice. The Patrician’s chief advisor does not have much to say on matters of staffing.”

The questions were coming fast and hard now.

“Who rules the city?”

“Lord Snapcase.”

“Who’s his chief advisor?”

“Volatilis.”

“Ye gods! Let me guess, when he casts the vote he goes for neigh rather than aye. What about the wars, who with right now?”

“Omnia. Borogravia. There’s the ongoing, ah, conflict with Klatch, but that’s pretty much background noise by now. It’s not a war, it’s the status quo.”

“What, not Sto Lat? Did we manage to retain one friend?”

“Sto Lat was annexed years ago,” Vetinari said calmly, as though it was perfectly natural for the bloodied, frothing stranger to speak of ‘we’ when referring to Ankh-Morpork. “The entirety of the Sto Plains is under Morporkian rule.”

“Why Omnia though? What have the Omnians done to us?” Vimes couldn’t help himself. “Shoved too many pamphlets under the door?”

“Metaphorically speaking, yes. They tried to tell us the good news about their god, but Lord Snapcase is not at home to good news, religious or otherwise. He prefers bad ones. They give him a reason to implement his pet policies.”

“Unlike you, eh?”

Vetinari gave him a blank look. “Pardon?

Suddenly, Vimes was ashamed. He remembered as though it was yesterday – and who knows, in this cauldron of time soup it might have been – that Vetinari had voluntarily locked himself up in a small metal tube designed by a mad genius, descended into the sea, travelled for days under water and land, in the company of Nobby Nobbs, in order to prevent a war. Whatever the man was (a ruthless tyrant, a murderous assassin, an infuriating, heartless bastard who manipulated you by using your weaknesses and your strengths against you), he was not a warmonger.

Had this happened? Was the Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device real? And if it was – _was the Gonne_?

“Where is Leonard da Quirm?”

“He was inhumed,” Vetinari said, and something about the way he said it-

“Did _you_ kill him?”

“Yes.”

No. There was nothing to feel ashamed about. Then or now, Vetinari was a ruthless bastard with a killer’s heart and hands. He might prefer the personal touch to the anonymous slaughter of war, but death paved his road, his courtyard and his antechamber; probably carpeted his bedroom, too.

“Why?”

“I was paid to.”

“Who by?”

“Now, sergeant, why should I tell you that?”

“Why not? What do you have to lose? We’ll both be dead soon, we might as well share.”

“Is that a promise?” Vetinari touched the fingertips of his steepled forefingers to his lips. “By a representative of a foreign power,” he said slowly, weighing his words. “They worried about the potential war engines that would come out of Ankh-Morpork, had the inhumation not taken place.”

This was like being back in the Patrician’s antechamber. Tock-tick, ticktock, tick… tick-tock went the clock, stirring the porridge in Vimes’ brain with its swinging pendulum.

“Was this the reason why you’ve been charged with treason?”

“It was not. You understand that a contract with an Assassin is a private business matter between two individuals, not a political issue.”

“Why, then?”

The corners of Vetinari’s mouth curled in what might have been a smile, had it not looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “Because I’d strayed onto an unauthorised path and undertook steps to implement _diplomacy_ during state visits. Negotiating with the enemy was deemed unpatriotic, especially since I, unlike the heads of other noble houses in our proud city, had made myself suspicious by never raising my own regiment.”

“Who has high command over the army?”

“Lord Rust.”

A strangled laugh erupted from Vimes’ throat. “How is that going?”

“As one would expect from an army that spreads the splendour and glory of Ankh-Morpork across the Disc. Sometimes as many as one-third of the troops return from a campaign; some of them even with most of their limbs attached… And may I just say, sergeant, how much I’m enjoying this?”

“Enjoying what?”

“Being interrogated by a true policeman. One who does not extract answers with an assortment of tools that belong in the hands of a blacksmith, not the law. Not pulling out any fingernails during questioning is considered a dangerously subversive approach, one that encourages revolutionary ideas.”

Wincing, Vimes glanced down at Vetinari’s hands. They appeared whole, the nails pinkish ovals against the blueish-white skin.

“Who’s the captain of the Palace Guard?”

“Captain Carcer.”

**_NO_ **

Vimes’ entire being curled up in revulsion, and then exploded. He was screaming, shouting abuse against heaven and disk. Suddenly at the window, hanging from the bars under the ceiling, clutching with claw-like fingers, staring wide-eyed into the world outside, breathing in the familiar stink of Ankh-Morpork with desperate, open-mouthed gasps. The beast had burst from its cage and it was howling, slavering for _blood, blood, blood_.

“Yes, indeed. Captain Carcer.” Vetinari sounded calm, and for a moment Vimes wanted to strangle the man, not to kill him, but to make him croak, to rip that fucking silky voice to shreds. “Not your favourite officer, if I recall correctly, sergeant. Nor indeed vice versa. He was dispatched to kill you that day, and I believe that assignment gave him much pleasure, even though he obviously did not succeed. Unfortunately, neither did I, in inhuming him; I was under an obligation, if not under a contract. But I did not know then what I do now. Tell me, Sergeant Keel, do you sometimes wish you could go back in time and fix past mistakes?”

Vimes swirled around and faced the Assassin. Vetinari was just sitting there, on his velvet cushion, like an overbred cat, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his eyes cold. And he remembered… he _remembered_ what he had thought then, when he and the Patrician were sharing a cell while the dragon was burning their city. He remembered thinking of a man who, locked up in a cell for years, trained little birds and created a sort of freedom. And he thought of ancient sailors, shorn of the sea by old age and infirmity, who spent their days making big ships in little bottles.

He remembered how he thought of the Patrician, robbed of his city, sitting cross-legged on the grey floor in the dim dungeon and recreating it around him, encouraging in miniature all the little rivalries, power struggles and factions[5]. He thought of him as a sombre, brooding statue amid paving stones alive with slinking shadows and sudden, political death.

History had spiralled in on itself and had spat him out in a place where he’d been before, in a time where he hadn’t. Vetinari was using him again; he’d been answering Vimes’ questions patiently until he hit upon the one that triggered _it_. The one that released the beast and that turned Vimes into a weapon in Vetinari’s hands. There was nothing Vimes could do. If he survived this cell, if he was taken somewhere, anywhere else, if he came face to face with Carcer, he would murder him in cold blood. He would not enforce the law, because there was no law to be enforced; he would not be doing his duty, he would follow the primal, ancient urge that blossomed blood-red in the back of his brain.

He was Vetinari’s terrier once again.

“How can he still be captain of the Guard?” Vimes spat. “Why didn't you do anything?”

That bloody eyebrow rose again. “Me? Why, what a droll idea. What do I have to do with a guardsman?”

“He enjoys cutting up people, he’s a killer, and you know it.” Vimes clenched his fists. “Of course so are you so maybe you feel a kinship-”

Vetinari stood. It was one smooth movement, like an unfurling vine tendril, no ungainly sorting of limbs and unfolding of stiff joints.

“I am an Assassin, sergeant,” he said into Vimes’ face. “Not a thug.”

Vimes’ body had taken up the defensive stance automatically the moment Vetinari rose in front of him like a toadstool. His shoulders bulged and his fists clenched, and he relaxed them with great effort. Vetinari looked him down and up. “Astounding,” he said under his breath, as if talking to himself. “Your muscles do the thinking for you, and yet…”

“What about the Unmentionables?” Vimes snapped. “Are they still around?”

“How is a city supposed to work if there are no men in plain clothes asking the right questions and weeding out undesirable element? They’re called the Unspeakables now.”

“Wahoonie, wahonie,” Vimes said grinning maniacally. “Carcer runs them as a hobby, eh?”

“What you must understand is that Captain Carcer is not as young as he once was. None of us is. Well, apart from you, obviously. I must say you are exceedingly well preserved, for a man whom I saw dead thirty years ago, sergeant.”

Vimes took a deep breath. “That’s ‘commander’, sir, not ‘sergeant’.”

“Pardon?”

“ _Commander_.”

Vetinari didn’t say anything. He stood completely still and silent, neither blinking nor breathing, and Vimes felt that gaze of his bore itself into his brain through his eyes, felt the silence listen, suck in the words that he hadn’t spoken yet; probe at the knowledge concealed in Vimes’ mind.

“You gave me that title, sir,” he said in a very low voice. “You made me commander, knight and duke. When you were ruler of this city, _sir_.”

Vetinari blinked. “Good god, did I? Tell me, _commander_ : when I was ruler of this city, was I drinking heavily?”

“You survived on dry bread and water.”

“Indeed?” He stared at Vimes and then stepped away, releasing Vimes from the paralysis that had kept him in place. “Dry bread and water? How very melodramatic.” He walked a few paces and then turned around without the swirl of his robe, which somewhat undermined the effect. “I should _like_ to hear more about myself, if you please.” He sank back down on his cushion and motioned at Vimes to sit likewise. “You are a good interrogator, commander. Whereas I am a good listener. _Tell me all_.”

To his surprise, Vimes did.

Vetinari was not, on the whole, the man into whom he wished to confide anything. But in the Here and Now, Vetinari was the only person who was likely to believe a single word he was saying, and Vimes was tired of being on his own. To say that the Patr- that Vetinari was a friendly face from his past would be stretching the definition of ‘friendly’[6]; but he was a familiar face from a present Vimes desperately wished back.

Vetinari _was_ a good listener. He only interrupted Vimes twice to ask him to clarify a point, and he sat back and took it all in. And he did believe him. Vimes could feel it.

“What you are saying, commander,” he said slowly, “is that a younger version of you was killed in your past and you found yourself in a future that isn’t yours. In your version, I should be Patrician of Ankh-Morpork.”

“Yes.” Vimes contemplated his answer. ‘ _Should_ ’? Well, what the hell. Better the devil you know can keep the city running. “Yes!” There were two more questions he had to ask, but he could not bring himself to voice them. His throat clenched and his tongue stiffened when he so much as thought of pushing the words past them. What would he give now for a packet of Pantweed's Slim Panatellas, or, even better, a bottle of Bearhugger's. What would it matter, what did anything matter now that the future had ended? “My future was stolen from me,” he said, his jaw clenched.

“Just that: your future,” Vetinari said. “If what you’re saying is true, then my whole life was stolen from me.”

“What?”

“You had a life, commander. For a number of years, you got the chance to do something that you excelled at and that you loved. I could have made this city work.”

“By legalising assassins and thieves. But turning criminals into pillars of society.”

“Criminals are the pillars of society now, and its foundation, walls and roof also.”

“You would have been a ruthless tyrant,” Vimes threw in his face.

“I would not have been a paranoid sadist,” Vetinari snapped. “Do you know what one of my greatest permitted achievements has been? I told them to tax the rat farms, and the Patrician’s chief advisor didn’t veto my decision because he was distracted by a sugar lump. This did, of course, lead to a temporary increase in the rat population as the farms were quickly shut down and the rodents released, but I believe I have made the best of it. This is the level of political debate in Ankh-Morpork today.”

“You don’t know what the level of political debate was in my day,” Vimes muttered, remembering some of the letters from the Campaign for Equal Heights.

“I am beginning to remember.”

“Sir?”

Vetinari began to pace the room. “Yes indeed, commander. Ever since we’ve been talking, I’ve been getting flashes of memories that are not my own. And yet I _know_ them to be mine and to be true. There’s only one explanation: your appearance here, cut off from your past and your future and in a present that is not your own, has caused the walls between the parallel universes to thin.” He stopped and turned to face Vimes, who fixed his gaze at a point behind Vetinari’s left shoulder. “You are familiar with the Bracae Temporis Hypothesis?”

“I’m not sure that I am, sir.”

“The Trousers of Time,” Vetinari translated. “Ah yes, I thought you might. Well, what I believe is happening is that the trousers in question have been laundered, pummelled, wrung out, run through the mangle, and folded so that the layers of fabric are pressed against each other[7]. Our alternative selves are practically within reach, especially in spots where the fabric has become threadbare. There appears to be a version of me that is a fat man who gorges on crystallised jellyfish and fried curious squid tartare[8]. I don’t pretend to understand why my appointment to Patrician makes me develop unnatural eating habits.”

“Sir, I must get out of here.”

Interrupted mid-flow, Vetinari fixed Vimes with a cold stare. “But why? What is out there for you?”

“I don’t know, sir. But I intend to find out.” He paused and, as no further comment was forthcoming, prompted: “If those rats bring you things, why not ask them for the keys to the lock?”

“Why would I need the keys to the lock?”

“To get out of here.”

“And go where? You know, commander, the problem with men like you is that you don’t think these things through. Is going on the run really preferable to imprisonment? It’s warm and dry here, and the rats make sure you won’t starve. I will give them instructions to feed you once I’m gone. I’m not a complete monster, you know.”

Vimes ground his teeth, leaned down and picked up a knife from the dinner plate. Vetinari watched him for a while, and then sat down and took a book off the little shelf beside him. Since the rats couldn't read, the library he'd been able to assemble was a little baroque, but he was not a man to ignore fresh knowledge. He found his bookmark in the pages of Lacemaking Through the Ages and read a few pages.

After a while he found it necessary to brush a few crumbs of mortar off the book, and looked up.

"Are you achieving success?" he inquired politely.

Vimes gritted his teeth and hacked away. Outside the little grille was a grubby courtyard, barely lighter than the cell, and in the centre a gallows. That hadn’t been here last time. The trousers had been well and truly mangled and he was afloat in a slop bucket filled with filthy detergent. There were bits here and there that had happened before, but it was all wrong. He was staggering through a world of déjà-vus and his grip on reality was slipping.

But there was one thing that was solid and real. He stabbed, stabbed, stabbed. The knife blade twanged and shook in his hand.

Now there was a shallow hole in the mortar near the middle bar. It wasn't much, Vimes knew, but it was a start.

"You don't require assistance, by any chance?" said the Patrician.

"No."

"As you wish."

If this bit of history were to repeat itself, there was a chance. It was a faint chance, and Vimes did not really believe in it, but there was nothing else he could do. The mortar was half-rotted, but the bars had been driven deep into the rock. Under their crusting of rust there was still plenty of iron. It was a long job, but it was something to do and required a blessed absence of thought. They couldn't take it away from him. It was a good, clean challenge; you knew if you went on chipping away, you'd win through eventually. The library was where it all had started. The Librarian must have witnessed it, and there was an ape who understood the nature of time, even if he did not understand trousers. Vimes remembered the “Ook?” that he’d heard lying on the library floor. The Librarian had been there, and he must know that Vimes needed his help. Oh please gods, let history repeat itself…

“Just out of interest, commander: what is your next step going to be when you get out of here?”

“I’m going to find my _wife_!” Vimes snarled. He could feel Vetinari’s gaze bore itself into the nape of his neck. The bastard was raising his eyebrow at his back, he knew it.

“I didn’t realise you were married, commander. She must be a lady of extraordinary character strength.”

Vimes didn’t stop to ponder the meaning of Vetinari’s words. His heart had swollen and was choking him, beating in his throat. This was it, the moment for the question he dreaded. He had to do it. If he hadn’t been here to marry Sybil, she was likely to still be unmarried, and then… Sybil always had a soft spot for bedraggled, hurting creatures. She was sensible, she would understand, once she stopped trying to slash him with her ancestral sword. He couldn’t imagine an alternative version of his wife who wasn’t _kind_.

“I must ask you one question, sir, and please listen very carefully: I want you to give me a straight answer, a simple statement, because if you don’t, I swear I will ram this knife so deep in your throat that it will come out your-”

“Please, commander. Control yourself. Just ask.”

Vimes stabbed the knife one last time into the mortar and leaned his forehead against the back of his hand.

“In this present, what happened to Lady Sybil Ramkin?”

“She was eaten by the dragon.”

Vimes fainted.

End of chapter 1

 

[1] In Vimes’ street vocabulary, this meant a person who did not actively try to kill him while he was in execution of his duty.

[2] If the man ever slept. Vimes suspected that the bed might be just for show.

[3] Or possibly thirty years ago, but that was not what it felt like. Time, as Vimes was rapidly learning, was a human construct.

[4] That is to say: fast, not wriggling on his belly.

[5] With rats, scorpions and spiders, who, Vimes was prepared to bet, had built a higher civilisation than Lord Snapcase’s government.

[6] Or, for that matter, the definition of ‘past’.

[7] Considering the sheer number of alternative pasts, presents and futures, the Trousers of Time must have an infinite number of legs. This poses the question just whose trousers they are. Philosophers have speculated about a quantum octopus, but thinkers of what would one day be known as the Rincewind School of Thought posit that the trousers had been dropped by a tentacly thing from the Dungeon Dimensions.

[8] Traditionally, tartare is not a dish that can be fried. That’s what curious about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With copious quotes from Night Watch and Guards! Guards!


	2. Temple

There was screaming.

With great effort, Vimes blinked his eyes open. The screaming didn’t stop, and, after due consideration, he decided that it wasn’t all in his head. Blurry pictures swirled from the depths of his dreams, mingling with the images that his eyes conveyed to his brain. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if the vision of Lord Vetinari standing by the door and looking taller and thinner than ever was real or a figment of his imagination. Vetinari was very still and very pale. For once not concealed under his robe, his black shirt and trousers emphasised the long-boned shape of his arms and legs.

“Ah, commander.” It was not the voice that Vimes ever wanted to hear first thing in the morning, but in the circumstances he would happily put up with it just to not be left alone in the dungeon, with the prospect of death as his only company. Ah, no, there would be his thoughts as well, they’d too keep him company. All things considered, Vetinari would be infinitely more preferable; at least Vimes could shout at him and even hit him if occasion presented itself.

_Sybil was dead._

The pain at the loss of his wife burned through his guts like acid. They had killed Sybil, and he would make them pay for it. His wife and _his child_. A sharp stab of pain to his stomach made him curl up like a worm on a hook. His child had never existed in this trouser leg, not even in potentia, and yet he felt like he’d stumbled headfirst into the unknown infant’s grave.

Vetinari was speaking, and Vimes forced himself to listen. “I’m about to be executed.” A thin hand flew to the pale throat above the black collar and Vetinari rubbed it absent-mindedly. “The rats will provide you with all necessities when I’m gone. You might find it prudent to talk to them, lest they’ll lose interest in you and abandon you to your fate. I have instructed them to bring clean bandages. As you can tell by the screams, the staff have taken up their morning duties and they will reach you in due time. They are quite conscientious.”

“Have they tortured you?” Vimes had pushed himself into a sitting position and looked Vetinari up and down. Nothing about his posture betrayed that he was in pain.

“They have not.” Vetinari glanced down at his own hand. “I confessed to treason most readily, thus throwing them off their stride, I believe. You see, commander, even a tiny thing like a fingernail is a carefully designed component of the human body. I find mine rather useful for scratching off dried ink from the tip of my pen et cetera.”

Keys jingled in the lock. As Vetinari straightened his spine, Vimes could have sworn he took a deep breath. “Good luck, commander.”

“Yeah,” Vimes muttered as arms reached in and pulled the man out of the cell. “You too.”

They ignored him, and he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself by hurling abuse their way. He had to get his bearings and out of here. Pushing down on the agony that burned him up inside, he picked up the knife, hitched up the sleeves of Vetinari’s robe, and went back to work. _Stab stab stab_ , went the knife, _crumble-crumble_ went the mortar. The Librarian hadn’t come to pull him out of this hellhole. History had not repeated itself. He stabbed the knife in sharply and winced as the shock of the impact reverberated all the way up his arm. He would have to tear out the bars with his bare hands and he was rather looking forward to the exercise, futile though it would prove. _Sybil once tore out a bar from a window and used it to knock out a werewolf._ Vimes groaned, or it might have been a sob, and attacked the wall with renewed vigour.

He was still hard at work hours later, when the screams of the prisoners had moved closer and the cheers of the crowd outside had long faded. He’d forced himself to watch the execution: Vetinari stood on the gibbet as calm and straight-backed as ever, and Vimes wondered if he tried to fade away, to become invisible to the masses that had come to witness the show. The rope went around his neck. The trapdoor opened. His body fell with a sickening _woosh_ , like a sack of potatoes, and danced at the end of the rope. The crowd applauded. Vimes had never felt so alone in his life.

Then, they’d cut him down. That was the end of Lord Vetinari.

***

Noon came and went. Outside, shadows crept from one side of the courtyard to the other. The rats brought food that Vimes ate with a kind of petulant determination. His torturers-to-be meant to make him sweat, but he knew all about that particular game.

The keys rattled in the lock.

Vimes threw the knife down and kicked straw over it just in time before the door opened. Framed in the rectangle of light stood Vetinari, black robe and all, and behind him hovered two thugs.

“There you are,” Vetinari said at the staring Vimes. He motioned at the thugs, who tossed a bundle of clothes and a pair of boots at Vimes. “Put these on and come.” He beckoned at Vimes with a gloved hand. “Unless you wish to remain at His Lordship's pleasure.”

Vimes hesitated for a fraction of a second, but complying seemed the reasonable course of action. He dressed quickly and strode towards Vetinari, while all kinds of horrible things were bubbling within him; Vetinari shook his head almost imperceptibly and Vimes stored them away for later. They climbed out of the dungeons, they walked down the corridor, they stepped through the door and into fresh air[1], they crossed the courtyard and got into a black coach. Vetinari presented a paper at the gate, it was duly inspected, a document was held out for Vetinari to sign, and Vimes was free[2].

“Can I see?” Vimes held a hand out for the paper. Vetinari gave it to him without a word. It was a short note ordering the release of prisoner Johan Stagg[3] to the hands of Havelock, Lord Vetinari, on behalf of the Palace, signed _Lupin Squiggle Sec'y pp_.

“Wonse?” Vimes said, focusing on the least relevant element of the great escape. “ _Wonse_?”

“Ah, you know him,” Vetinari said calmly. “A very useful man.”

“A madman who summoned a magical dragon that burned down half the city!”

“That problem was dealt with.”

For a moment, Vimes was sidetracked. “How did you get rid of it?”

“The draco nobilis eloped with one of Lady Sybil’s dragons,” Vetinari said. “Unfortunately, it was too late for Lady Sybil, who by that point had been well and truly eaten.”

“Wonse survived,” Vimes gritted out through clenched teeth.

“I had a quiet word with him and imparted on him the importance of never trying anything like that again, before inviting him to work for me. You must understand, commander, that the ability to think outside the box can be a most admirable quality in a man, if controlled by a well-regulated mind.”

“Are you saying that Wonse’s mind is well-regulated, sir?” Vimes’ voice dripped sarcasm.

“No. But mine is.”

In Vimes’ own mind, something fell into place. This was _Vetinari_. The man who, in Vimes’ past, had designed and equipped a dungeon for his own potential imprisonment at some point in the future. Vetinari would prepare for the eventuality of his own execution, of course he would. Vimes had been a fool to even for a moment expect the man to be truly hanged by the neck until dead.

“All right, sir, I’ll bite,” he said wearily. “How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Survive. I watched you do the hemp fandango this morning. Unless it wasn’t you and you sent some poor bugger to your death instead.”

“No. It was me.”

Vimes stared at him for a moment, and then his hand shot out and grabbed Vetinari’s collar. Vetinari didn’t move, and Vimes yanked it open, tearing off buttons in the process. There, beneath the soft fabric, the skin was marred with deep furrows and bruises that were not so much livid as completely berserk.

“Have you satisfied your curiosity, commander?”

Vimes swallowed. “Yes, sir.” And, much more gently, because the wounds looked painful and not even Vetinari deserved _this_ , he asked, “What happened?”

Vetinari smiled, grimly. “There was some confusion. The hangman used the wrong kind of rope and my neck didn’t break.”

 _The rope_. Vimes blinked. The rats had been dragging a rope along the drain. Its significance had not registered then, but now he understood, and he shivered.

“And they let you go? Just like that?”

“It was the will of the gods,” Vetinari said. He tugged his collar closed again and was holding his hand to his throat in a strangely vulnerable gesture. “If a man is hanged by his neck and survives, it must be because one or several gods want him to live. Divine intervention counts for a lot. For one, it amounts to a full pardon.”

What kind of mind would carefully consider its own downfall and turn it to advantage? Vimes wondered, not for the first time. Aloud, he asked, rather more caustically: “What if that man is a convicted arsonist and murderer?”

“Quite. It is an idiotic rule. Only an evil man would consider it a good idea to let a criminal go because the hangman was inept.”

“He’s not called Mad Lord Snapcase for nothing,” Vimes said. “If a god is willing to let a condemned murderer go free, you don’t release the murderer. You hunt down the god.”

“Gods tend to be well protected.”

“So what?” Vimes growled.

Vetinari measured him with a long look. Then, to Vimes’ surprise, he smiled. “In that trouser leg of yours, you were something of my right-hand man, were you not?”

Vimes tensed. “What do you mean by that?” _You are not my employer, sir. Here and now, you don’t have any power of me. I can leave without a backward glance._

_And go where?_

“I don’t remember ever thanking you for your services. Have I?”

“You showered me with ridiculous titles, which I believe was your way of showing gratitude. And you gave my men a dartboard.”

“Ah yes. That makes sense.” They continued in silence for a while, and then Vetinari spoke again. “I don’t have the power to bestow any titles now, but I can offer you my hospitality. Ah, here we are.” The coach stopped on cue and the door was opened. Vetinari accompanied an inviting gesture with a smile that wore orange stripes and flexed a swishing tail. “Do come in, commander.”

Vimes glared at the house and then back at Vetinari. “You must be kidding me, _sir_. I thank you for getting me out of the Tanty, but our paths part _now_.”

They were standing in Easy Street. The building that Vetinari expected him to enter was a posh townhouse; above the door was the familiar coat of arms: the plain, black sable shield of the Vetinari family. Next to it was the Guild seal, which, against all probability, managed to be discreet and conspicuous at the same time[4].

Vetinari’s smile didn’t waver, it merely became more reptilian. “You persist in not understanding, commander. I am not inviting you in out of the goodness of my heart. You are a loose Barking Dog and I’m not having you run around my city unsupervised. Please _do_ come in.”

Vimes scrutinised the servant who was holding open the door of the coach and whom he’d taken for a footman; the face was vaguely familiar. One of the Dark Clerks? Vimes filed it away for later, too. The files were piling up, he'd have to get his hands on a notebook soon. Now, grinding his teeth, he stepped out of the coach and over the threshold to Vetinari’s house.

It was… surprisingly anti-climactic. The interior of the house was as nondescript as Vetinari’s robes of office. A short young man welcomed them, handing a stack of papers to his master. “Good afternoon, Drumknott,” Vimes said, who had expected him. He saw a quick appreciatory smile flash across Vetinari’s face.

And then, Vimes was ushered into a bathroom and left alone. He sank into the hot tub, his muscles melted as tension left them, vapour rose around him, prickling in his nose and eyes.

Sam Vimes wept. He cried for the lost lives of the people he loved, cried in huge, blubbering sobs, cried until all the moisture was wrung out of his body and there was nothing left but an empty hole. He rinsed off tears and snot with handfuls of bathwater, climbed out and got dressed in fresh clothes that had been laid out for him. Just like the previous one, this shirt was too tight around the shoulders while the sleeves were too long. As he shaved in front of the mirror, he pondered if Vetinari meant to subtly hint that he intended to treat him as an equal, by giving him his own clothes rather than those of a servant.

He strolled down the hall until he hit upon the door behind which he heard the murmur of conversation. It was with a pang that he recognised Vetinari’s voice, which sounded damaged and hoarse. Only yesterday he’d fantasised about ripping those silky tones to shreds; now that the hangman’s rope had done just that, all he was left with was the wriggling worm of disgust and guilt.

“Quod auf euch banditowali, wygebcie die drey episteli in hæc sekwencji. Skontakcicie euch cum agenti pani Margolotty, quod überquercicie pass pod Wilinusem. Mitteilcie pani oralnie, daß problem gewesen resolwowany. ”

Ah, Überwaldian. It was somewhat comforting to know that this element of Vetinari’s life had not been flushed out with the dirty detergent after the trousers had been through the laundry. Vimes had never before heard him speak Überwaldian, but everyone knew that he’d studied languages[5].

“Nicht erlaub mir dich zuaufhalten,” Vetinari said. ‘Don’t let me detain you,’ Vimes’ brain translated the familiar cadence. He waited for the span of two heartbeats and, when nothing stirred, knocked at the door.

“Come!”

It was as if nothing had changed. Vetinari was sitting at his desk in an otherwise unoccupied office. Vimes scanned the room with a practised gaze and picked up a change in the texture of air by the heavy drapes in the corner. Aha. A secret passage if ever he saw one. The smell in the room was familiar too. Its source was quickly located: it rose from the heap of rags in the basket by the hearth, thick like fumes from the Ankh and just as inflammable.

“Good boy Wuffles.” To his own surprise as well as Vetinari’s, Vimes knelt down by the basket and petted the greasy head. The dog stirred and the evidence of vital processes filled Vimes’ nostrils. This, too, was comforting. Vimes might be cut loose from his timeline, but the stink of Vetinari’s dog was yet another rope that tethered him to his past. Hell, in his current predicament he’d welcome the odour of Foul Ole Ron as an old friend.

“Since you appear to be familiar with the names in my household, permit me to address you with yours… Commander Vimes.”

Vimes startled. “You knew!”

“I’ve _remembered_. And may I just say how disconcerting it is to have a head full of memories that are not true.”

Vimes snorted. “Yes, tell me about it, sir. _Everything_ I remember is no longer true.”

“You are not haunted by false memories, commander?”

Vimes considered the question. “No.” He was haunted by the loss of real memories. He thought of Sybil. He thought of Carrot and Angua, of Detritus, of Cheery, of Fred and of Nobby. Even as they were slipping away, he clung to them, conjuring up their faces before his mind’s eye, even Nobby’s, which was the action of a truly desperate man. They had been slipping away ever since he fell through the roof of the library with Carcer, and the History Monks tried to remedy that by returning his cigar case to him: an anchor that was now truly lost in the swirling cauldron of time.

There was a knock at the door, and Drumknott came in carrying a tray with two cups of tea and a box of cigars. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, your lordship,” he said. “Shall I have it served here?”

“Please do, Drumknott.” Vetinari picked up one cup and gestured at the tray. “Help yourself, commander.”

Vimes lit a cigar, closing his eyes in a brief moment of bliss. His stomach was as empty as the hole in his chest where his sadness and pain should be. He shovelled sugar into his teacup until it resembled hot syrup and swallowed it in huge gulps to fill the black cavity before it engulfed him from the inside.

“This is all very fascinating,” Vetinari was saying as he leaned back in his chair, watching Vimes over the rim of his cup in a curiously domestic pose. “I should like to get to the bottom of all this, wouldn’t you, commander?”

“I should like to go home, sir,” Vimes said coldly. To Vetinari, it might be an intellectual exercise, like that damn Times crossword, and he resented it.

“‘Your lordship’ would be more appropriate. There’s no need to call me sir, since you are not my subordinate or employee,” Vetinari said.

“Perhaps we can swap,” Vimes said. Vetinari raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You are an Assassin, aren’t you?” Vimes continued. “That means I can employ you to kill somebody on my behalf.”

“I believe you mean ‘retain’, commander,” Vetinari said. “Assassins are not employed, and we do not kill. We inhume. However, I have a mind to let it pass. I admit to being intrigued, especially by the question of my fee, seeing as even the clothes on your back belong to me, quite literally.”

“Nil mortifi sine lvcre, eh?” said Vimes, pronouncing the ‘v’ with some degree of pride. He picked up Vetinari’s pen, tore off a scrap of paper, and scribbled IOU ONE (1) PENNY in large, ungainly letters. He shoved it at Vetinari. “Here you go, your lordship. Knock yourself out, my treat. The man I have in mind isn’t worth more than this.”

Vetinari blinked. For a moment, Vimes wondered if the Assassin would stab him with the pen that had written the offensive note. But then, Vetinari spoke.

“I need a name.”

“ _Captain. Carcer_.”

The door opened and the servants came in, shrouded in the aroma of fried proteins and carbs. Unlike the Patrician, the Assassin did not live on dry bread and water. The IOU note vanished between Vetinari’s bony fingers like a backup ace in the hands of a gambler.

Sam Vimes had dinner with an Assassin, and it didn’t make him sick.

***

“Why Carcer?” Vetinari asked once the dishes had been cleaned away and Vimes was enjoying a post-prandial cigar. There was a brandy-shaped hole in the atmosphere comprised of swirling smoke, creaking leather chairs, flickering candles, and the occasional toll of the Inhumation Bell that carried through the night, but since neither man drank, they made do with a nice cup of tea. “He enjoys cutting up people, I admit, but his influence and authority are limited. I understand that he was a very special enemy of yours, but I’m not interested in playing a part in your personal vendetta”

“I’ve given it some thought while you were off being dead this morning.” Vimes sucked at his cigar. “Carcer went on a rampage like a ferret in a popular rural entertainment act. I don’t know how, but he changed history. All that dangerous knowledge he had? He must've used it. Snapcase is Patrician, Lupine Wonse is still alive, none of this was supposed to happen.”

_Sybil is dead._

_Don’t._

“The death of… Sam Vimes can’t have caused all this,” he continued. The hitch was barely perceptible, but Vetinari noticed it. “He was not important.”

“Are you saying I promoted an unimportant man?”

“You didn’t promote me until… after. When you were made Patrician, I was,” _lying drunk in the gutter_ , “nobody. All those changes that happened before I got myself sorted out must’ve had another reason.”

It might have had something to do with the sensation of emptiness that was encroaching on him from all sides, including the inside, because Sam Vimes found himself having a heart to what passed for heart with Lord Vetinari. He would regret it in the morning, he knew. He hadn’t felt like this when he fell through time into his past. That had seemed like a boys’ night out, before the excrement hit the windmill. This was different. Vimes had heard stories of people who were abducted by fairies, and when they came back a month later it turned out that hundreds of years had passed in the real world and everyone they knew was dead. He knew now how they felt. Even though it was hard to think of Colon and Snouty and Knock and Swing as fairies of any description[6]

He had to treat it just like another case to make sense of it.

Unfortunately, having learned the hard way about the capricious nature of time, Vimes was now discovering a hypothesis postulated by the philosopher Didactylos. _‘Things just happen, what the hell.’_

In order to understand Didactylos’ reasoning process, it is necessary to pull back the lens of the narrative and consider the problem from a wider perspective, leaving Vimes wrapped up in feelings of personal failure and guilt. One might, for example, wonder how it was possible that the pebble of a young lance-constable’s untimely death thirty years previously had triggered an avalanche that altered the path of progress, upset the structure of an entire city, and affected the life of a man as steel-willed and razor-minded as Havelock Vetinari.

_Things just happen, what the hell._

One might also wonder if Carcer could have possibly possessed enough dangerous knowledge when was left behind in the past to prevent the un-election of Snapcase and the election of Vetinari. Whatever Carcer might have been, he was not a political thinker and plotter who could have successfully affected the civic leaders’ vote on Patricianship.

_Things just happen, what the hell._

‘Things’ in this instance included the death of Lady Roberta Meserole[7], who suffered acute haemorrhage in the confusion that ensued in the aftermath of Snapcase’s appointment. In the melee of revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, social climbers, sycophants, innocent[8] bystanders, out-of-town heroes who had flocked to the city to fight evil and each other, and one or two tourists who had wandered in looking for the way to the privy, a knife could easily slip. And when it slipped, it slipped in, all the way up to the hilt. Without Madam’s protection and guidance, Havelock Vetinari lost a powerful patroness and, in effect, was orphaned[9] for the second time in his young life. The fact that he was disliked by his peers and distrusted by the people who’d just come into power might have been the reason why he set off on the Grand Sneer immediately after his final exam[10]. Rather than returning to Ankh-Morpork, he then went to Genua, where he’d come into an inheritance as a result of his aunt’s death.

Midnight came, to the discordant accompaniment of the city’s bells. There were the bells of the night watchmen, mingling with hoarse and frequently strangled cries of ‘All’s well!’; the bells of the guilds that were drowned out by the silences of Old Tom; and eventually the fashionably late bell at the Guild of Assassins. Vetinari’s expression was inscrutable; when the last stroke faded, he fixed Vimes with a look and said:

“Can you climb, commander?”

“Why? Are you proposing a trip to the mountains, your lordship?”

“The destination I have in mind is ecclesiastical rather than mountainous.”

Vimes narrowed his eyes at him.

“The Time Monks, Vimes,” Vetinari explained wearily, and Vimes’ pulse jumped at the sound of his real name. “You’re going to take me to their temple.”

“Why should I do that?”

Vetinari sighed. “Because if you don’t, I will have to follow you there secretly after you sneak out of my house in the small hours – which, you must admit, will be rude to the extreme. Why not save us both the trouble?”

The bastard had a point. Vimes briefly entertained the idea of sneaking out anyway, but it would be an act of childish petulance. This was Vetinari’s house, he knew every lock, every creak of the floorboards, every loose roof tile, every scorpion pit.

They took to the rooftops. Vimes felt each creak of his joints as he skidded over thatches and tiles, shadowed by the Assassin who glided across roofs like the angel of death that he was, skulking in shadows of clouds that passed in front of the gibbous moon. Below them, the streets were much darker than in Vimes’ day. No gas lights had been installed under Lord Snapcase; no shops and restaurants were open after curfew. The only sources of light were the lanterns of hurry-up wagons that bobbed through the alleys like hinkypunks through the bog. Vimes missed the feel of cobbles under his feet. Still, he had to admit that this was an easier way to traverse the city than playing dodgeball with watchmen and Heroes[11] in the streets.

They slid down from the roof in Clay Lane, Vimes slightly out of breath, Vetinari quiet like the grave.

There was a block of three buildings: a cheapjack corner shop on the left, a boarded-up house in the middle, and – a non-shonky shop on the right. _Damn._

“It should be the boarded-up one,” Vimes mouthed at Vetinari. “The entrance was through the shonky shop next door.” He pointed at the lopsided house that a sign proclaimed to be the residence of ‘Frank ſlander & ſonſ, towncryerſ, eſt.’.

“You didn’t bring a crowbar, perchance?” Vetinari said, eyeing the boards in the windows of what was very definitely not a Hublandish temple.

“There is a garden…”

They squeezed through a narrow alley, scraping their shoulders against the bricks on either side, and came out at the back. Vimes dragged himself over the wall and dropped into the Garden of Inner City Tranquillity; next to him, Vetinari slithered across the bricks like a lizard. Something crunched beneath Vimes’ foot: a discarded cigarette box that hadn’t been there a second before. It was hard to tell in the treacherous light of the moon, but Vimes was used to reading shadows. A rolling stone here, a spinning hose there – the garden was moving.

A figure approached them; light bounced off its bald head and it was carrying something that might have been mistaken for a scythe by anyone susceptible to a spooky atmosphere. Rage bubbled up inside Vimes. He’d been pushing down on it, unwilling to let it boil over and erupt in a torrent of violence, but the valves were creaking as much as his joints and the beast reared its head, ready to strike.

_It’ll come when you call._

Vetinari’s hand curled around his forearm, applying pressure, but not painfully so. Vimes jolted. In all those years that they’d known each other, Vetinari had never reached out and touched him, certainly not in a manner meant to calm him down. Well, he'd slapped him on the back, once, but that was to aggravate him.

“He’s just a little bald wrinkly smiling man, Vimes,” Vetinari said in a very low voice. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”

Sweeper beamed. “I see your lordship knows Rule One.”

“I want to go home to my wife!” Vimes was roaring. They’d been led into the temple where the smell of some sort of Hublandish incense and gentle gling-gling-gling music rubbed Vimes’ nerves raw. Vetinari, sipping tea with rancid yak butter, admired a game that Vimes would have taken for Thud had he thought about it and discussed ‘elephants’ and ‘chariots’ with the white-haired monk Vimes knew as Qu.

“Unfortunately, this is currently not possible,” Sweeper said once Vimes had stopped for breath. “Your past was altered, commander, and the present as you knew it no longer exists.”

“You don’t say,” Vimes growled. “I was killed. I died before my eyes. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? All those memories that I have, they’re no longer real. This is what you’re telling me, right? They’re just in my mind. There’s a word for people who have a head full of memories that aren’t real.”

“You’re not a lunatic, commander.”

Vimes snorted with hollow laughter. “Yeah, right. Suddenly I understand Foul Ole Ron and his mates. I’d fit right in.”

“Surely you know that his lordship has also been experiencing memories that are not his own,” Sweeper said. “And I doubt that he plans to join the Canting Crew any time soon.”

“I must admit I find the idea intriguing,” Vetinari said. “Not the idea of joining Mr Foul and his friends, heaven forfend. The idea that a reality exists where I make this city work.”

Sweeper shot him a glance, while Qu shook his head. “Not you, my lord,” Qu said. “It is true that in a universe of infinite possibilities your life has taken many different paths. But, and this is important, not _this_ life.”

“Commander Vimes travelled to the past and changed events,” Vetinari said. “Surely I could do the same.”

“But you see, my lord, Commander Vimes wasn’t meant to change events. He was making sure that events unfolded the way they were supposed to.”

“But, and this is the material point, they _didn’t_. Ergo, it is possible to effect changes.”

“I _died_ ,” Vimes said coldly. “That doesn’t bother you, you cold-hearted asshole.”

Vetinari gave him that look that went on for too long. “You didn’t die, Mister Vimes,” he said. “A boy whom I never knew died, like thousands before and after him. _You_ live.”

“His lordship has a point,” said Sweeper. “You live, commander. Even though someone who could've been you died thirty years ago, you are alive today. This is not something that many people can boast.”

“Why?” Vimes asked, helplessly. After shouting and raging at the old monks, his anger had somewhat drained and he felt vaguely ashamed. They were old men, when all was said and done, Rule One be damned. “Why didn’t I simply… disappear?”

Sweeper and Qu exchanged a glance. “What you must understand, commander, is that there is a lot of guesswork involved in what we do,” Sweeper said. “Here, out in the field, we think on our feet. What happened to you is far from normal; it would not have been possible without a certain… time event that was pretty much unique in itself. Bearing all this in mind, we believe that you confused Time.” Vimes heard the capital letters click into place. A swift glance at Vetinari told him that he’d heard it too. “When the boy who was Sam Vimes was killed while the man Sam Vimes was right there, Time tried to reassert itself.”

“He was new to the job, he messed it up,” Qu muttered and was quelled by a look from Sweeper.

“Sam Vimes now is an anomaly,” Sweeper continued. “He doesn’t belong in the past, and he no longer belongs in the present, either. All that he has is a _future_ , which is the reason why Time put him at a point where he can pick up that future. Put in very simple terms: you are a surplus specimen, commander. You shouldn’t be here.”

“The easiest solution would be to kill you,” Qu said. “Sam Vimes would still be alive in the presents in which he belongs, but not in this one.”

“Give him money and he’s gonna do it,” Vimes nodded at Vetinari, who raised the corners of his mouth. “An IOU might do.”

Vetinari turned his back on them and stared into the garden, where shadows moved. “If you sent us back to the past…” he said slowly and was cut short by Qu.

“We can’t do that. There’s been much too much time shifting. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do, back in Oi Dong. The abbot will foam at the mouth and hit people with a wooden yak.”

“Indulge me,” Vetinari said quietly. “If you sent us back to the past – what would happen?”

“There would be too many versions of you running around, messing things up. Alternative selves are supposed to stay in alternative presents; they’re not meant to cross between them willy-nilly.”

“As the commander intimated: there are ways of dealing with surplus individuals.”

“You would travel to the past and kill yourself?” Vimes stared at Vetinari’s rigid back in disbelief.

“No, commander. But I would travel to the past and kill you.” He turned around and flashed a quick, sharp smile. “If it helps.”

 

End of chapter 2 

 

[1] This being Ankh-Morpork, for a given value of ‘fresh’.

[2] This being Vetinari, for a given value of ‘free’.

[3] Like John Doe, but more murderous.

[4] The seal ensured a specialised form of protection, as an automatic contract was put on the life of any person who broke into a house insured by the Guild.

[5] Which was the reason why Ankh-Morporkians didn’t considered philology a soft option.

[6] Vimes was a city boy who didn’t know about the Nac Mac Feegle.

[7] Vimes knew that Lady Roberta Meserole had been alive when the dragon ruled his city, as he had personally offered her to the heroes in lieu of the daughter that Vetinari lacked in gross defiance of custom and usage.

[8] This being Ankh-Morpork, the group of innocent bystanders consisted of one blind hermit who had lived in a hole in the ground in a remote corner of the Palace gardens since time immemorial and talked to birds. As celebrations spread across the grounds, an ambitious undersecretary had the brilliant idea to dig the hermit out of his comfortable burrow, sluice him down, and parade him around as a Cultural Curiosity, a link to Our Proud Heritage and a Very Old Man To Whom The Rich Are Kind Look At Them Oooh And Aaah At Him. Blinking confusedly in daylight, the hermit promptly fell backwards into the hoho, thus joining the ranks of the casualties of the transitional period.

[9] Nobody knew how Vetinari had become an orphan the first time round.

[10] Nobody seemed to remember what Vetinari’s final exam entailed, but it was unlikely that it had anything to do with linguistics.

[11] Lord Snapcase found that Heroes gave the city a polished look, not to mention kept all those dwarfs and trolls away. Everyone knew that Heroes were the, well, heroes of the story, and a ruler who had their sword, bow and axe was Good by definition. Rattling their swords and swashling their buck, they roamed the streets with their nipples on display, always on the lookout for the next swamp dragon to slay and the next maiden to whisk off. But since swamp dragons tended to explode before Heroism had finished brandishing its weaponry, and the maidens of Ankh-Morpork tended to be of a rather robust nature and were quite capable of doing all the whisking themselves, the Heroes spent a lot of time in their dank, lonely rooms polishing their swords.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Überwald is a mixture of Germany, Russia and Transylvania, Überwaldian, for the purpose of this story, is a mixture of German words and vaguely Slavic grammar, with a bit of Latin thrown in.


	3. Scorpion Pit

Havelock Vetinari was not a man who took pleasure in the act of killing. He took pride in a well-executed assignment[1]. Unlike men who hadn’t received an Assassin’s well-rounded and expensive education, he did not delight in the prolonged slaughter of fellow human beings[2]; a stab with the blade might be quite controversial, but swift death is a man’s best friend. When he was young, his head had been filled with the classics, which abounded in tales of interesting homicides. He listed the killings meticulously in his notebook, sorting them by originality, viciousness, necessity, and sustainability. He then reviewed them in the light of Good and Evil, and came to the conclusion that these categories were entirely meaningless. If you were Good, what you did was Good, that’s how everybody knew that you were the Hero. Quod erat demonstrandum.

As a result of his private studies on matters of morality, the question he distilled as most relevant was: ‘Cui bono?’ Asking ‘for whose benefit’ seemed to him to have a wider range of applications than merely the realm of criminology, where it is traditionally used. The logical answer was: ‘For the benefit of as many as possible’[3].

Vetinari was not, technically, exiled to Genua. He had gone there of his own free will, because the maternal side of his family had been Genuan and the family estate needed looking after. The time he’d spent in Überwald had been very educational and mutually beneficial[4], and he took his newfound knowledge and set off to acquire more.

In Genua, he met a Fairy Godmother and saw a city built on the values of Goodness. It worked up to a point, he had to admit as much; the citizens were obedient and, for the most part, kept to their roles. It was only when they broke character, as it were, that trouble started. According to Vetinari’s reasoning, the benefit for the Genuan society would have been greater if its members had fulfilled roles to which they were suited rather than those that were thrust upon them. It certainly didn’t benefit society in the slightest that the Fairy Godmother eventually cast him in the part of Prince Charming, even though he was clearly built for the part of the Villain, or the Brooding Anti-Hero at best. She was obviously losing her touch[5], he diagnosed, and resolved to fully embrace the Morporkian part of his heritage. That was why he returned to Ankh-Morpork, where Lord Snapcase administered an honest-to-gods reign of terror with occasional showers of mad gibber and spontaneous executions.

After observing the Patrician’s somewhat erratic modus operandi, Vetinari decided that he would remain faithful to his family motto ‘Si non confectus, non reficiat’ and only ever fix those things that were, as they say in common parlance, broke. In practice, it meant that he exclusively accepted commissions to inhume those whose continuing existence would lead to more trouble than they were worth. In the Guild, he thus soon acquired the reputation of being picky and elitist, to the great envy and chagrin of other Assassins, who felt that he’d taken snobbery to new heights and wished they had thought of it first.

Bearing all this in mind, one may understand why Vetinari readily suggested the inhumation of a surplus Sam Vimes, whose existence didn’t benefit anyone, including the man himself, and whose existence failure would potentially bring about much-needed changes.

Sam Vimes, for his part, was not thrilled.

“Why go through all that trouble of travelling to the past, your lordship? Why not stab me in the present? I’ll eat my boots if you don’t have at least half a dozen deadly weapons on you even now.”

“But commander,” Vetinari said, his tone glacial, “you’re not listening. Your death in the present would effect nothing. It would merely _remove_ you, without any benefits to anyone. If you were killed in the past, however, you could take your place and attempt to change events.”

“Hang on…” Vimes said, slowly, as he screwed up his brain to follow the reasoning of Vetinari’s twisted mind. “When you say you’d kill me, you don’t mean _me_ , do you? You mean my past me?”

“But of course. We can refer to the person in question as John Keel, if you prefer, to avoid confusion. John Keel failed. If you, with your present knowledge, took his place on the eve of the 25th of May, you could make sure that everything proceeded according to plan.”

“You’re mad,” Vimes said, blankly. He wasn’t horrified; this was too outrageous to be horrifying.

“Am I?” Vetinari walked to the board game, picked up a piece, sighed and put it back down. “How else do you propose to change the past, commander?”

“I… can’t,” Vimes said helplessly. His own words were like a punch to the solar plexus. Up to this point, there’d been a glimmer of hope that something, somewhere could be shifted and events reversed. That he could wake up from this nightmare of his own making. Hearing Vetinari discuss death with the detachment of an Igor chilled him to the very bone.

Vetinari was watching him with something like compassion in the icy blue eyes. “No,” he said softly. “You can’t. You can’t change the past, but you can shape the present. And to this end, you need to make the past your present. Again.”

“And relive the Glorious Revolution again and again, until I’ll get it right?” Vimes said with biting vitriol.

“Is this too high a price to pay for getting your life back?” Vetinari opened his mouth to say something more, but Vimes was having none of it.

“Shut up!” he snarled at the Assassin. He pressed his hand to his forehead, aware of the eyes of all three men on him, rubbing vigorously, as if he tried to massage some sense into his brain through the bone of his skull. This was… oh gods, this was an abyss, opening up before him. He could jump and try again. If he failed, if he died there, at least he wouldn’t have to drag himself through this purgatory. How could Vetinari think of something so… unspeakably wrong?

“What is there in for you?” he asked. Oh gods, he’d told Vetinari to shut up, it’d be the scorpion pit for him tonight.

“I remember events that I never experienced, commander, and I enjoyed myself,” Vetinari said slowly. “It was fun. Making this city work was fun. I,” he laughed softly, “I want to have fun.”

Vimes was staring at him in stunned horror. “Fun?” he croaked. “Fun? People died!” he was shouting again, surfing the red wave of rage, slamming into the rock of Vetinari’s impassive stare and cold calculating mind. “My blunder upset the whole world, there are wars that should never have happened, and all you can think of is fun? All you ever want is to push pieces around the board, like it was nothing. Like it’s not real people who struggle and suffer and end up dying in the streets with their throats cut or in the maw of a fucking dragon!”

Suddenly, Vetinari was in front of him. “Has it ever occurred to you that I, too, might have experienced and felt loss?” Vetinari said in one breath. “I have offered you a solution, commander. One that happens to suit me, up to a point. It would give me the chance to grow up into a world worth living. Do you realise what else it’d mean to me? If we were sent back to the days of the Glorious Revolution, I would inhume the surplus Sam Vimes in his role as John Keel so that you could take his place, because I know that you would be incapable of doing so yourself. Do you know what would happen then? You would have to kill me.”

Vimes blinked. “What?”

“I would be the surplus individual. I couldn’t be left running around in the past. And if history were changed, I couldn’t return to my future, because there would be another me already there.”

“You propose that we kill each other?”

Vetinari shrugged. “Don’t tell me it never crossed your mind.”

They were staring at each other, standing so close to each other that Vimes could feel the warmth radiating off the other man’s body. It was a bit of a shock, because he’d always vaguely assumed Vetinari was poikilothermic[6] like a lizard.

“As much as we’re enjoying this fierce and interesting debate,” said Sweeper. “I must point out that it is purely academic. We never offered to transport you back to the past.”

“Can’t be done,” Qu said. “Time has been ravaged enough as it is.”

Sweeper cleared his throat. “Can I perhaps interest you two gentlemen in reincarnation?”

They returned to the house in Easy Street in the small hours. Vetinari let them in through a trapdoor in the roof and led Vimes to a room on the top floor. He opened the door, lit a candle and invited Vimes in with a gesture. Vimes briefly wondered where Vetinari slept. Was there a room somewhere with a black dressing gown hanging on the door? “Did you seriously suggest that we travel to the past and kill each other?” Vimes had turned to face Vetinari, who remained standing in the door.

“Do you have a better suggestion?”

“Why not try to make this present work?” Vimes’ voice sounded as hollow as his soul felt. “Knowing you, you have a web of allies that you can use.”

“Possibly.” Vetinari raised a hand to his throat and tugged at his collar. Damn! Vimes had forgotten that the man was injured. To be fair, he’d forgotten his own aches and pains too, the bruises from the fall, the abrasions on his shins and knees. Now that his blood was no longer pumping adrenaline, they made themselves felt. “I was under the impression that you wished to change what happened,” Vetinari continued.

“Not like that.”

“How, then?” And as Vimes didn’t answer, Vetinari sighed, took a step into the room and closed the door soundlessly. “I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,” he said. “You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides. “

“Yes!” Vimes cut him short. “You gave me this speech before. The rolling sea of evil, the people who’d follow every dragon. The fact that people like me need people like you, because you are the ones with the _plan_ ,” he concluded bitterly.

“Yes, that does sound like something I might have said.” Vetinari flashed him one of his rare smiles, the one that looked like a true smile rather than the squaline quirk of his lips. “People like me need people like you in turn, commander. I’ve remembered.”

“Oh.” _Oh._ Damn Vetinari. Here and now, he looked and sounded almost honest. Almost human.

“You can stay in this room. I don’t have a spare bedroom as such, you understand, but you’ll be comfortable enough here. I’ll have a blanket brought up. And please, commander: do _not_ sneak out.”

“Good. Night. Your lordship,” Vimes said through gritted teeth.

Vetinari glided out like smoke.

It was a cross between an old nursery and a box room. Vimes briefly wondered if this was where Vetinari had slept as a child, but his imagination failed to fill the room with images of a toddler-sized Assassin. And anyway, hadn’t the aunt bought the house when Vetinari was in his teens?

There was no bed there, only an old divan that stood by the window. Vimes was no expert, but as husband of the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork he’d learned something about antique furniture and saw that it was fauriental design, such as had once been fashionable in Genua. It was large, clean and soft, and Vimes was exhausted to the very marrow of his bones. Staggering, he toed off his boots and was asleep before he hit the cushions.

There was warmth and comfort. He lay buried in soft pillows, and something soft was enveloping him. Sybil’s arms? She was there, next to him, and he shifted closer, pushing his hips into his wife’s… bony… side.

Vimes froze. He was a dead man. Beside him, being assaulted by his wayward crotch, was Vetinari. His mind reeling, his senses bludgeoned by conflicting sensations, Vimes blurted out: “I miss my wife.” 

“Yes, I can feel that.”

_Damn, damn, damn and fuck!_

Shame made way to burning anger. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Vimes demanded. Vetinari way lying next to him, quite at his ease, and Vimes was clutching a fistful of his shirt like a lifeline.

“I brought you a blanket,” Vetinari explained. “When I put it around you, you grabbed me and wouldn’t let go, and since I didn’t want to wake you-” he shrugged. “I don’t mind where I sleep.”

“You do sleep, then.” Vimes let go of the man’s shirt and pulled his hand back.

“Of course.” Vetinari turned his head, his shirt collar fell open and Vimes saw- Oh gods. The blue of the bruises had bled all the way up his neck; the welts were raw and swollen. He reached out and touched Vetinari’s collarbone very gently with his fingertips. What did it matter now? He’d rubbed his dick against Vetinari’s thigh, the scorpion pit was a-waiting, scorpion tails were a-spiking.

Vetinari’s hand slithered up and seized his around the wrist. He pulled Vimes’ hand down, away from his bare skin, but didn’t push it away. His heartbeat throbbed beneath Vimes’ palm, and this was quite possibly the least believable thing that had happened to Vimes since the night he chased Carcer on the roof of UU library. Vetinari had a heart, and it was beating.

“Sorry,” Vimes muttered. “Does it hurt?”

“Yes.” Vetinari’s voice was calm and somewhat… drained? “I’ll live.”

_Why are you still here? In my bed?_

“I have memories that are not my own, Vimes. It’s your proximity that causes them. The more time I spend with you, the more I remember.”

Vimes startled. Did Vetinari read his mind?

“I do not read minds,” Vetinari continued in the same, drowsy, tone. “Some questions, however, are glaringly obvious, unspoken though they might be.”

“You like it,” Vimes said flatly.

“Yes. They’re good memories.”

Ye gods. What was this man’s life like if memories of the Vetinari from Vimes’ trouser leg were the good ones? Memories of a life in which he was a tyrant, disliked, distrusted and feared by everyone he knew. Where he was plotted against, thrown into his own dungeon, arrested, shot at, forced to inhale arsenic fumes… Vimes grimaced, struck by sudden recollection. Vetinari, poisoned, collapsed on the floor; and he had found him and dragged him to bed – the devious bastard was heavier than he looked. His mind focused on the crime, it never occurred to Vimes that Vetinari had been weak and helpless like a newborn kitten. In the course of the years, Vimes had more than once seen him physically incapacitated, but it wasn’t until now, not until Vetinari admitted that he _liked_ something, that he realised that the man was vulnerable.

The physical proximity didn’t help. His body was not simply battered but tenderised and deep fried as well, and it sought the comfort of, not to put too fine a point on it, another body. The unthinkable was happening. He felt the beat of Vetinari’s heart reverberate through his hand. His crotch tugged him forward like the thinking brain dog tugged forward Foul Ole Ron.

The candle flickered and went out. Vetinari sighed, his heart fluttered, and Vimes followed the insistent and irresponsible call of his groin and shoved his hips into warmth and friction.

For the span of two heartbeats – Vimes was counting – nothing happened. Then, Vetinari’s hand that lay loosely around Vimes’ wrist tensed. He dragged Vimes’ hand down, as though embarrassed about the suddenly frantic throb of his heart. But no; he didn’t just pull Vimes’ hand _away_. He pulled it _towards_ – towards the waistband of his trousers, to be precise. Lightheaded, Vimes decided that it was time to start breathing again. He sucked in a lungful of air and cursed himself immediately, since the sound he made could have easily been mistaken for a groan. There was nothing to groan about. He was just – _oh, gods_ – he was just fumbling… his _hand_ was fumbling, he had nothing to do with it… certainly his brain didn’t – he was fumbling with fabric and buttons. And then, the sound of a breath hitching; Vetinari’s stomach tensed where skin made contact with skin, the brush of hairs against Vimes’ fingers, and, oh, fuck, Vetinari’s cock. And still no scale nor sting[7] of scorpions.

Vetinari let go of Vimes’ wrist and his hand shot between Vimes’ legs like a poison dart. His fingers slipped in easily, manoeuvring around textile obstacles with confident and single-minded purpose until they found his dick. Even as Vimes groped to get a better grip around Vetinari’s cock, the man shifted, the angles changed from uncomfortable to merely awkward, and Vimes pressed his forehead to Vetinari’s shoulder, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

He was forced to twist his wrist, and his forearm dug into the jutting bone of Vetinari’s hip. But it was worth it, because Vetinari, _Vetinari_ , suddenly gasped and his stomach shuddered. Vimes groaned. Sweat pooled in the small of his back, drenched his hair and even the hollows of his knees. In his hand, Vetinari’s cock twitched, and Vimes groaned. Keeping his eyes shut, he clung to the dreamlike sensation of this… this _wank_. _I’m jerking off Vetinari’s dick_. He snorted with gallows humour, and then gasped and gasped again. It was difficult to breathe, what with his face still pressed into the supple, living, shifting muscle of Vetinari’s shoulder, but if he raised his head, he might catch the man’s eye by accident, and then they would have to kill each other. This was better.

The heat at the pit of his stomach has to boil over soon. He has to make Vetinari come; strip him off that cool detachment and relentless self-control. Inside him, the beast rears its head and licks its teeth. Anger, always close to the surface, fuels lust, tearing at him from inside, and he grunts, thrusts his hips, thrusts his cock deeper into Vetinari’s hand, into those long fingers that are pumping him stroke for slick stroke, until heat erupts and he comes all over the man’s hand with a filthy moan and a harsh shove of his pelvis. Vetinari loosens his grip, his breath hitches, softly, as if he was still holding back, despite everything. Vimes, lightheaded and panting, grinds his hips into Vetinari’s thigh and tightens his grip around his cock. It’s hard and fast and vicious, the body next to him goes rigid, a pained moan tears from Vetinari’s throat, and he’s coming in a hot gush, hips jolting helplessly.

Vimes took a few gulping breaths until his head stopped spinning and pulled his hand out of Vetinari’s pants. For a moment, it hovered awkwardly, dripping with what the more specialised magazines distributed at Mrs Palm’s discreet establishment referred to as ‘Assassin’s seed’. It was disgusting.

He had to stop himself from licking it off.

The heady scent of Vetinari’s arousal enveloped him like hot vapour, settling on his skin, coating his tongue and filling his nostrils. He wiped his hand off on his shirt. Something should happen now. One of them should get up and leave without a word. Or, failing that, they should rip off each other’s soiled clothes and rub against each other, skin on slick skin, digging nails into each other’s flesh and teeth into each other’s lips. _This_ didn’t quench anything. This was falling off the wagon, too much and not enough, the disastrous first step towards self-destruction. But his limbs were leaden, his head filled with cotton wool, and next to him Vetinari’s body grew heavy and slack. The hand resting against Vimes’ thigh twitched. ‘Oh, crap,’ Vimes thought and stumbled headfirst into oblivion.

He couldn’t have slept longer than one hour, for the next time he woke, it was to the sound of merry jingling of glass and the milkman’s whistling down in the street. Seven a.m., Vimes thought. It was not a time of day that he knew much about, but the one thing that he knew was that the milkman always came at seven, regular like clockwork. Just as he was turning his head away from the light that was creeping in through the window, his mind caught up with the signals his body was sending him, and…

_Oh crap._

His pants were unbuttoned and there was a distinctive sensation of gluiness. Things stuck to other things, and when he moved, stiff cotton tugged at the hairs of his groin as a painful and embarrassing reminder of…

Vimes winced and opened his eyes, wishing the wizards had turned him into a frog. By the window, in his line of vision, stood Vetinari. Vimes saw his calm, pale profile and the shadow of stubble.

“Good morning,” Vetinari said. His voice was still hoarse and Vimes closed his eyes momentarily, thinking of the bruises he’d seen last night.

“What are you doing here?” Vimes asked. Shouldn’t Vetinari have slunk out like an Assassin in the night? Vimes was a bit hazy on the etiquette of ill-advised sexual encounters, but he was fairly sure that sneaking away was customary.

“I am watching the chaos in the streets.”

Vimes, who had finished buttoning himself up surreptitiously under the blanket, rolled out of bed, joints creaking. “That’s just the milkman.”

“Mr Ronnie Soak,” Vetinari said. There was a soft sound which might have been a strangled laugh, and Vetinari repeated, with deliberate inflexion. “Mr Ronnie Soak. Good old Mr Soak. What would the city be without him.”

“He’s very reliable,” Vimes said. He would never have guessed that Vetinari’s idea of morning-after conversation was small talk about the work ethics of small businessmen. Interesting that even without political scheming and diplomatic negotiations there was something about his brain that made him incapable of normal human interaction. All that Vimes wanted was for them to behave normally, i.e. mumble awkwardly without meeting each other’s eye and keep out of each other’s way for the rest of the day. Or life.

“He’s Chaos,” Vetinari said.

“What are you talking about? I never met anyone as organised as Ronnie Soak. He arrives on my doorstep seven o’clock sharp, without fail.”

“Yes.” Vetinari turned away from the window and faced Vimes. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

Vimes sluggish brain caught up with the conversation; the capital letter had been unmistakable. Small talk? Hah!

“When you say ‘Chaos’ you mean…” he said.

“The unofficial ruler of Ankh-Morpork, one might say.”

“That’s a turnup for the books,” Vimes said, his brain buzzing now that it had been jolted awake. “Mr Ronnie Soak, fancy that! An anthropomorphic personification.”

“The Fifth Horseman,” Vetinari said. “Once there were five.”

“A law-abiding, hard-working member of society," Vimes said. “Went about his business, didn’t get in trouble with the Watch. Freshest milk and butter in the city.[8]”

“He appears to have been a citizen of good standing in your Ankh-Morpork.”

Vimes nodded.

“That means I must have given him permission to live there. Why? And the city worked, despite Chaos living in its midst.” Vetinari looked pensive. “Ergo, Chaos is not necessarily a destructive force. There is a Hublandish school of thought that claims Chaos is destroyer and creator. A,” he hesitated for a moment and quoted: “Apparently complicated, apparently patternless behaviour that nevertheless has a simple, deterministic explanation and is a key to new levels of understanding of the multidimensional universe.”

Vimes replayed the words in his head. “The _multidimensional_ universe?”

“Quite so.”

Vimes grinned. There was no mirth to it. There were just teeth. “Mr Soak sounds just the man to help me with my inquiries.”

Vetinari’s company took some getting used to. Vimes was accustomed to being sent on errands, while Vetinari lay in wait in his office like a spider in its web. This Vetinari, who was out and about seemingly all the time, was disconcerting. They squabbled before they left the house, because it hadn’t occurred to Vimes that he could get to the dairy in any way other than by walking. Vetinari, for his part, was an Assassin and a nob and as such took taking the coach for granted.

“I preferred it when you suggested the rooftops,” Vimes groused.

“If you have objections against the coach, there’s always the sedan chair.”

Ah yes. Vetinari’s thoughtful wedding present, the mangled trouser-leg edition.

“Get in then, your lordship,” Vimes bit the end off a cigar and spat it out. “I’ll drive.”

Ronnie Soak was in the cream-settling room when Vimes and Vetinari entered the dairy, walking past churns stacked along the walls and large metal bowls beside a sink the size of a bath. Beneath the overwhelming aroma of milk, other scents struggled to make themselves smelled: disinfectants, well-scrubbed wood and something warm and manurey that might’ve been cow, but might just as well have been horse or sheep. Vimes’ Morporkian nose had long learned to shut down at the merest whiff of the more pungent organic odours.

A butterfly suddenly swooped down on Vimes with the frantic flutter of wings that is characteristic for the species and looks like an air crash waiting to happen. He swatted it away. The tip of one wing brushed his fingers. They tingled. When he glanced down, he saw that the insect had left a tiny speck of shimmering red dust behind.

“What’s a butterfly doing in a dairy?” Vimes murmured.

“Beating its wings,” Vetinari said. He pushed open a door. “Good morning, Mr Soak.”

The milkman stood over a bowl of milk, staring intently at its contents. He was a short man, whose blue-and-white striped apron almost reached the floor. At the sound of Vetinari’s voice, he straightened up, adjusted his peaked cap and spoke in portentous tones, the effect of which was somewhat diminished by the broad Morporkian accent and the somewhat nasal voice: “I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to… the dairy.”

“I’ve been watching you ever since you arrived, Sir Samuel,” Ronnie Soak told Vimes handing him a cup of tea. Vimes was staring at the bowl of milk in horrified fascination; patterns swirled and emerged in the smooth mirror surface. It reminded him… it reminded him of the garden of those damn History Monks. Was _everyone_ watching him? All the time? _Everything_ he did? Vimes felt a blush creep up the sides of his neck to his ears.

“Not all the time, of course,” Ronnie prattled on, utterly unconcerned. “Got better things to do. Got a business to run. I do milk, cream, butter, yoghurt, cheese, eggs by arrangement. When your lordship was Patrician, I knew to deliver eggs whenever there was a hanging.”

“An execution always makes me hungry,” Vetinari said, face and voice impassive. “It must be all that exercise in the fresh air.”

“I hear you have the answers to multidimensional questions, Ronnie,” Vimes cut in. “Tell me: how do I get home?”

“Oh dear. Is this why you’re here? I don’t do that sort of thing anymore,” Ronnie lied. He did lie. Vimes smelled it, and one glance he exchanged with Vetinari told him that the man had sensed it too.

“Are you sure, Mr Soak?” Vetinari said. “From what the Time Monks-”

“History Monks,” Vimes said.

“I beg your pardon, History Monks told us, a critical time incident took place only the other day, to put it in human terms. I find it inconceivable that you, as an individual who is not, as the phrase goes, a creature of time was not involved in some capacity or other.”

“All right, all right!” Ronnie waved a ladle in a gesture of exasperation. “I tell you what I know and you spare me the interrogation. I know you two,” he looked from Vimes to Vetinari and back again. “You wouldn’t even do me the courtesy of good cop – bad cop. I’m not in the mood for being bullied by… PUNY HUMANS!” The valiant attempt at The Voice was foiled by the scrawny stature of the apocalyptic milkman. The apron didn’t help, either.

“You, Sir Samuel, caused quite a ruckus. Maybe even a fracas. The Auditors were most upset when you tumbled through time. It’s so untidy. They don’t like untidy, they’re the Law.” He cackled. “But then, so are you.”

“So what you are saying, Mr Soak,” Vetinari said slowly, as if relishing every word, “is that the commander broke a temporal law. Oh dear. How embarrassing.”

“Look, your lordship, the Auditors orchestrated the whole thing. The time crash was because of them. They wanted to stop life, they hate life. They consider it what you'd call drunk and disorderly.”

“Let me guess: they hate Chaos,” Vimes said, pointedly.

“They fear me,” the little milkman said.

“I must admit,” Vetinari said, toying with a cheese cleaver that he’d picked up quite by accident. “I’m not so fond of Chaos myself.”

Ronnie shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it, your lordship.”

“Those Auditors,” Vimes said. “Where are they?”

Vetinari looked up sharply. “Are you readying yourself for hot pursuit, commander?”

“They’re gone,” Ronnie said. “Me and the lads, we rode out. They didn’t like that at all.” All of a sudden, he seemed to expand. Darkness unfurled around him, swirling like mist. His eyes blazed. “I am Chaos!” he roared. “I am at the heart of everything! From disorder grows a new order!”

“That’s why we have laws.” Vimes wished he had his badge. His fingers were twitching to arrest Ronnie Soak for… for meddling with universal law. Or something.

“Indeed. And it is this new order that we are seeking,” Vetinari said. “Your assistance would be appreciated.”

Chaos turned his burning eyes at him and Ronnie Soak shrugged. “I’ve done my bit. I rid the world of the Auditors; me and the lads did. Everything else is up to you humans.”

“When you say ‘lads’…”

“Death and the others.”

“Mr Soak,” Vetinari laid his hands flatly on the table, fingers resting lightly on the handle of the cheese cleaver, whose blade pointed at Ronnie. “You have a valuable set of skills: you exist outside time. Commander Vimes here and myself have a vested interest in changing the course of time, starting thirty years in the past. Do not tell me that this poses too great a challenge for Chaos.”

Ronnie waved a hand. “Not my department. You gotta talk to the little monks.”

“We did. They refused to help,” Vimes said.

“What can I do? Time is not my core competence. You’re not asking Death to help you travel in time, or the Tooth Fairy. We’re anthropomorphic personifications, we’re specialised. Me, I create and destroy. One set of skills. Well, two in my case. I also make excellent cheese.”

Vimes opened his mouth, but Vetinari raised a hand. Vimes closed his mouth and immediately kicked himself.

“The way I see it,” Vetinari said. “Two paths are open to us: we can ask Mr Soak here to put his skills to good use to help us carve order out of chaos in the here and now. Or we find a way to go back to the past and start from scratch.”

“Where do we find your colleague in charge of time?” Vimes asked.

“You mean Time? He’s new, still trying to find his feet.”

“Pull the other one. How can time be _new_?”

“Time was shattered, commander. Her son took over. I don’t know how to contact him, but I know someone who might know. Her name is Susan Sto Helit.”

“The Duchess of Sto Helit?” Vetinari said. “My understanding was that she had strong ties to Death, not Time.”

“Yeah, well, Times change,” Ronnie said. “Go and bother her. She’ll be at school now.”

 

End of chapter 3

 

[1] And a well-executed inhumee.

[2] Other races were not deemed worthy an Assassin’s attention.

[3] If, young Havelock reasoned, inching closer and closer to the ideas of utilitarianism without the benefit of books by Roundworld philosophers, if the number of people living in a state of contentment exceeds the number of those living in a state of suffering, the entire society will benefit from such a state of affairs. He even wrote a treatise to that effect, a copy of which made it to the Palace as evidence of Havelock, Lord Vetinari’s dangerously revolutionary mindset, but the chief advisor ate it.

[4] The lessons Lady Margolotta learned included that a determined seventeen-year-old can move more smoothly and in a more coordinated manner than his gawky body would suggest. And also that it is possible to replace blood with other pleasures, as young Havelock point-blank refused to be bitten and even threatened her with a stake.

[5] He was later replaced by a frog, which only proved him right.

[6] Or would have, if the word had been part of his vocabulary.

[7] Like hide and hair, but less mammalian.

[8] Ronnie Soak also provided excellent yoghurt that tasted creamy rather than rotten. Vimes had been forced to have muesli with it once. The incident was never mentioned again.


	4. City

Miss Susan was sensible. There was no other word for it. She had a sensible hairdo, a sensible dress in a sensible shade of black, sensible shoes, and a sensible attitude that was necessary for restraining the forces of evil with which she dealt on a daily basis[1]. When Vetinari addressed her as ‘your grace’, she explained that in her classroom she was ‘Miss Susan’, and that was that. They had to wait for the lesson to end and sat meekly in the back of the classroom in tiny chairs where they’d been banished by The Voice. It was the voice of the school mistress that didn’t bother entering the brain through the ears but tugged at the spinal cord instead, setting one’s legs in motion despite oneself. Vetinari, who had pulled up his knees almost to his chin, was looking around with mild interest. The class had settled down after a short hubbub caused by the unexpected visit by two men who looked like they’d _‘kill you as soon as look at you’ **[2]**_ and who, as Miss Susan explained to the class, would tell them all about road safety and the dangers of strangers[3].

For now, Miss Susan was reading a fairy tale for the edification of young minds. The children were quiet as a mouse. The same could not be said for the mouse in a cage next to Vimes’ elbow that ran round and round in a squeaky wheel. He watched it for a while. The thing, which on second thought was probably a hamster, had black eyes that threatened to pop out of its head, and its stubby little paws worked frantically as it ran and ran towards a future that was exactly the same as the past. The wheel went round and round and nothing changed. Vimes felt a stab of sympathy. _You poor bugger_ , he thought, watching the mad race with his chin propped up in his hand. _I know how you feel_.

He startled guiltily at the sound of his name in the teacher’s voice. Vetinari was already unfurling from the chair and striding to the front of the classroom. He gave Miss Susan a wan smile and then swirled around to face the class of rabbits hypnotised by a snake. He smiled at them too. Then, he leaned in, flattened the palms of his hands on the desk and said in a very low voice: “If a stranger offers you sweets – _run away_.” He stared at the children, trailing his gaze from face to terrified face, and added. “Run away and scream, as loud as you can.” He straightened up abruptly. The class flinched as one child. “Can you scream loudly? Show me.”

The children shrieked like a herd of banshees.

Vetinari nodded, stepped away from the desk, stood by the wall and faded into the background.

Vimes realised he was staring. “Er, yes,” he said, stepping into the vacated space. “Good morning. My name is Commander Vimes,” he was finding The Voice again; this was like talking to a bunch of new recruits[4], he could do it. “I’m here to tell you about road safety. Do not jump out in front of horses. Always look both ways when crossing the road.”

A hand shot up. “Ooo, ooo, miss, ooo!”

Vimes heard Miss Susan sigh. “Yes, Vincent.”

“It’s ‘cos when coaches are going rilly fast miss you can’t get out of the way miss and then they’ll run you over miss and kill you stone dead,” the child said in one breath.

“Oh we know all about _that_ ,” another child said. “That other bloke came and told us all about killing and stuff. He was better. He had a _horse_.”

“And the horse had a wee-wee.” There was giggling. “But Miss Susan took the cardboard tube away.” There was some general pointing towards the life-size model of the Pale Horse in the corner. Miss Susan sighed again.

“Yes, it was a very impolite horse.”

“Whereas Commander Vimes and myself are very polite.” Vetinari emerged from the shadows and a smile flashed across his face like lightning. “Are we not, commander?”

“Very,” Vimes agreed. He longed, oh so much, for his badge. There was nothing he could present to these children, no badge of office, not his truncheon, no weapon… No, wait. There was a weapon. A man-sized one, and deadlier than most.

With cavalier disregard for his life, Vimes reached out and drew a stiletto dagger from beneath the folds of Vetinari’s robe. He threw it at the wall, where it stuck and quivered in a poster of the Tooth Fairy advertising the benefits of Brushing Your Teeth. The class went _Oooh_!

“ _Always_ be careful,” Vimes said into the rapt silence. “You never know where dangers lurk. Never trust strangers. Never trust no-one…”

“Yes, thank you, Commander Vimes,” said Miss Susan, while in the background the boy called Vincent was being querulous about ‘double negative’. “That was very informative.”

The bell rang. The shriek of the banshee erupted again.

Vimes decided that he’d never complain about recruits ever again. Their interview with Miss Susan didn’t progress smoothly as minor emergencies kept cropping up and required her attention. There was some blood, and a lot of snot, and even some wee. In the end, she sent the children out to play and closed the door and window.

“You don’t want to do anything heroic, do you?” She had a way of _looking_ at a man: not exactly belligerent but very definitive. As an accomplished connoisseur, Vimes could taste the anger trapped inside her like steam in a pressure cooker. And the way she’d said ‘heroic’ was not a compliment.

“Not at all, Miss Susan,” Vetinari said, just as Vimes was saying:

“I just want to go home.”

“And your home is not here,” she said.

“No. My home is not _now_.”

“What makes you think I can help?”

“We have been informed that you had the power to manipulate… Time,” Vetinari said.

“Oh really!” She looked at him and didn’t cower as he looked back. “Who told you…” She broke off and sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, as if to herself.

Vetinari’s look became quizzical. “Doesn’t it?”

“Miss Susan,” Vimes interjected. “It’s very simple: I don’t belong here. The History Monks say I’m a surplus individual. I ended up here by accident – because I screwed up and something in the past went very wrong.”

“Isn’t this why we’re all here?” Miss Susan said. “Somebody always screwed up, and something always went very wrong.”

“This is not the future that was supposed to happen!” Vimes glared at her. “I know that, because I already lived in the other future, the right one. I remember.”

“I remember the future too,” Miss Susan said. “That doesn’t mean much. Not until you get to the point where it happens, and then the pieces fall into place. Tell me, commander: are your memories coherent? Or are they just flashes of memory, like looking through a keyhole at people moving around in a large room? You can tell that something is happening, but you don’t have the whole picture.”

Vetinari stirred. “This is a very good description,” he said, eyes fixed at Miss Susan.

“Don’t tell me you too can remember the future, your lordship.” Her voice was dripping sarcasm. “Quite the pair of augurs you are.”

“No,” Vetinari said calmly. “Not the future. The past.”

“Amazing.”

“Not _my_ past. My _other_ past.”

“I see.” She regarded him in silence. “That must be irritating.”

“Quite so. Yet at the same time quite edifying.”

“And so you would like me to help you travel thirty years into the past where you, commander, will fix your own stupid mistake _heroically_ ,” she said with scathing emphasis, “Thus ensuring that history reasserts itself and your future – your correct future – snaps back into place.”

“Yes.”

“I see. Is that all?”

“Can you do that?”

Miss Susan blurred.

Miss Susan unblurred. “Yes,” she said.

Vimes stared at her. “Did you just… _stop time_?”

“This is a very silly question, even you must see that.”

Vimes’ finger tingled. He glanced down and saw that the spot where the butterfly had brushed his hand in the dairy was glowing faintly red. When he looked back up, Vetinari was looking at something moving by the window, a blue glow that spun and shimmered in the air.

Miss Susan pointed at Vimes’ finger. “Those butterflies are everywhere,” she said. “Things haven’t reasserted themselves fully yet, not after what happened.”

“When did it happen?”

“This, too, is a very silly question. Maybe four days ago, maybe thirty years ago, maybe next week.”

“Thank you for your willingness to help me,” Vimes said stiffly, to Miss Susan as much as in the direction of the blue glow.

“Things are fragile as it is,” she said. “Gods only know what might happen if we have the man with the mark of Chaos running around in the city.”

“What do I do?” Vimes asked. “Do I just stand around until you… or somebody gives me a push?”

“It needs to be prepared. The History Monks have to assist, they have the equipment.”

“They refused.”

“You might find that they’ll be open to a timely argument.”

“How long will it take?” Vetinari slid a sidelong glance at Vimes. “Or is this too a silly question?”

“Not more than four days. You’ll be informed.”

“Thank you,” Vimes said. The school bell rang. The clock struck midday.

 _Tick_.

“It looks like you’ll be going home after all, commander,” Vetinari said after they left Madam Frout’s Academy For Inquiring Young Minds. Around them, the street was bustling, in a genteel and, as Vimes noticed, human sort of way. Having traversed half the city in broad daylight, he found the lack of other species disturbing. He saw neither dwarfs nor trolls, who had been very much part of the scenery in his Ankh-Morpork – in the case of trolls sometimes literally. And now – nothing. No golems walking on silent clay-feet, not even a zombie lurching past. Instead, there was the occasional hero, on his way to the blacksmith or returning from the vaginarius[5], muscles gleaming and nipples perking. Somebody else might have wondered how heroes could exist side by side with the Unspeakables, but not Vimes. He was well aware that heroism was prime recruiting ground for the kind of men who liked to bash in heads for the greater good.

“Yeah,” Vimes said, looking around. All those peoples, all those lives. They weren’t real. He mustn’t start to think of them as real, no matter how much his eyes, ears and especially his nose were telling him otherwise. Real was what was in his head, not what his senses claimed.

His finger tingled and he rubbed it absentmindedly. His senses were wrong. His senses had tricked him into lusting after Vetinari, even if it was only for ten minutes. Half an hour at the outside. He cast a quick glance at the man, who was watching him impassively. “Yeah, I am going home, your lordship.” _And there’s nothing you can do about it_ , he was tempted to add, but he didn’t. Vetinari hadn’t tried to stop him, after all. On the contrary, of the two of them, it was Vetinari who had been gung-ho for it. Vimes rubbed the bridge of his nose. This was all too much. He had to think about it properly, and he couldn’t do it under the stone-cold gaze of that… _Assassin_. Yeah.

“I’m off, your lordship,” he said, looking over Vetinari’s shoulder and into the shadowy tunnel between the buildings further down the street. Vetinari raised his eyebrows.

“May I ask what you are planning, commander?”

“I’m going to get a job,” Vimes said. And, on an impulse, he added, “And see Rosie Palm.”

Vetinari’s expression didn’t flicker. It merely morphed into something that threatened to make Vimes blush. “She was a revolutionary,” he growled. Ye gods! Could Vetinari truly think that he was planning to see Rosie Palm in her seamstressing capacity? The memory of Vetinari’s fingers around his cock popped up, unbidden and unflushable.

“I know,” Vetinari said quietly.

“Know what?”

“About Miss Palm’s… involvement.”

“You do?”

“She was at the party when Lord Winder was inhumed.”

Inside Vimes’ brain, a cogwheel clicked. “You were there too,” he said flatly. It was bloody Vetinari who’d inhumed the old fool, he should have known. Killed in the middle of a crowded room, and nobody saw anything. Of course it was Vetinari.

The corners of Vetinari’s mouth curled up. “Briefly.” They stared at each other in silence, and then Vetinari spoke again in a level tone. “Give my regards to Miss Palm. And good luck with your job hunting, commander. You are not intending to join the Palace Guard, I assume.”

Vimes took a deep breath and asked the second question he’d dreaded: “What happened to the Night Watch?”

“You know what happened to them, you are an observant man, commander.” Vetinari said. “You heard watchmen ring their bells and proclaim that all is well for everyone to hear.”

“What about Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs?” Vimes asked, his heart beating madly. “Are they in the Night Watch?”

Vetinari looked blank. “I am not familiar with the names of all the watchmen, commander.”

“Sergeant Colon, fat bloke. Round face. Sweats a lot.”

“You have just described two thirds of the Night Watch.”

“Nobby, then.” Vimes floundered. Where to start? He finally settled for: “Often mistaken for a monkey. Carries a note signed by you as proof that he’s human.”

“Ah!” There was something like animation in Vetinari’s face and voice. “That was a watchman? I assumed that the image had risen from nightmares, rather than memories.”

“Nobby was one of my finest, most loyal men,” lied Vimes.

“It is clear to me that you didn’t employ him for his looks,” Vetinari said. “If it helps, commander: I understand there is a greengrocer, or rather greengroc’er, in Lobbin Clout who answers to the description of Mr Colon. You might try him.”

There was no point to inquire after Angua, or Detritus or Cheery. “What about Carrot Ironfoundersson?” Vimes’ mouth filled with sawdust even as he asked the question. Carrot loved Ankh-Morpork, he wouldn’t have let… _this_ happen.

“Ironfoundersson is a dwarfish name,” Vetinari said in a very low voice. “There aren’t many dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork.”

“He was the best officer the Watch ever had,” Vimes said quietly.

“ _He_ was, was he?” Vetinari said, just as quietly, and with a look that Vimes couldn’t read. “He isn’t here now.”

“No,” Vimes looked around pointedly. “I can see that.”

“I can see you have a lot on your plate, commander,” Vetinari said, pulling away abruptly and bursting the small bubble inside which they’d been whispering. “Very well. Don’t let me detain you.”

It was a blow that went straight to Vimes’ stomach, winding him. The devious little sentence spoken in that voice, it was too much. Vimes felt his knees buckle and steadied himself with superhuman effort. He wanted to reach out and grab the man’s sleeve, to hold on to the one thing in this mad new world that was familiar. But he fought down the urge, turned away, and began to walk down the street as quickly as he could without falling into a run.

The Night Watch was just as he’d expected: a ragtag bunch of petty criminals, ferrets and cowards who made Nobby Nobbs look noble. Yet there was something there, Vimes knew; a spark of something that could be kindled and stoked into a flame. There always was. The lads who joined the watch were not _bad_. They were small-minded, because they lived in a small world and only learned to think small thoughts. Vimes knew that what he was doing was stupid and, when it came down to it, not fair. He’d only be here for another two or three days, there was no point trying to shake ‘em up and to sort the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, his stint in the past hadn’t lasted for more than four days either and he’d made a change, oh boy hadn’t he just!

And he needed the money. He’d be _damned_ if he let Vetinari clothe and feed him for another day.

The voice of authority, Vimes mused as he left the watch house in Treacle Mine Road an hour later, that’s the ticket. His new badge clasped tightly in his hand, its edges digging into his palm, he was walking the streets of his city again and he’d be _damned_ if he wouldn’t make a difference.

He knew that he was damned already. _Nothing to lose, eh?_

Armed with nothing but his truncheon, his badge, and the Law that he wielded like a flaming sword, he stepped into the Shades. His week's advance pay jingled in his pocket. No terrors lurked within. The worst had already happened. All that Sam Vimes could do was find the people who had meant something and see for himself… He was doing the right thing, going back in time to put things right. His other self would die, but his younger self would live and his future would unfold the way it was meant to. Vetinari would die, but what use was he to anyone? The only thing Vetinari had ever been good for was making the city work. But he didn’t. He _didn’t_. Vimes threw the life of the Assassin on scales, weighed it against the life of Sybil, and added the lives of the watchmen. This was easy. Every single one of them, even Nobby Nobbs, was worth so much more than Vetinari. And it was not like Vetinari minded dying. He wanted Vimes to kill him.

 _Vetinari had come in his hand with a pained moan_. Vimes groaned inwardly. A few minutes of awkward fumbling and a handful of come would not make him question his decision. It would all be over in two days.

Rosie Palm wasn’t in, and he proceeded to Twinkle Street instead. What was the life of an ageing seamstress like who didn’t have the power of the Guild behind her? Rosie had been smart and strong-willed, but Snapcase and his henchmen were men who broke wills at will.

Mossy Lawn opened as was his custom: with a glinting instrument in his hand the application of which Vimes preferred never to learn about. He recognised John Keel, but Vimes explained the benefits of memory loss to him and then inquired after Lawn’s spare room; he’d be going on duty tomorrow night and needed a place to stay that wasn’t Vetinari’s house. Lawn seemed to fare fairly well. He had his surgery and his patients and the trust of the ladies of negotiable affection, and what more did a pox doctor need? Would his life be materially changed either way?

The only one whose life would be materially, and indeed terminally, changed was Vetinari. Vimes turned in the direction of Dolly Sisters and didn’t think of how Vetinari had shifted against him, stomach trembling against Vimes’ forearm, and how he moved his hand between Vimes’ legs.

Legs that refused to support Vimes’ weight all of a sudden. After criss-crossing the city for hours, he’d come full circle and had just turned into Lobbin Clout, where he spotted it straight away: Fred Colon & Sons, Greengroc’ers’, EST.

There was Fred Colon, round and red-faced, dark patches of sweat spreading under his arms, down his back, all the way to the collar, and, against all laws of physic, across the front of his waterproof apron. He was chatting with a customer, and two strapping lads whose stature and sweat patterns proclaimed them to be Fred’s sons were unloading potato sacks from a cart. Inside the shop, a shadowy female figure scurried behind the window and disappeared in the back. Vimes stood in shock. Had he really just seen Mrs Colon? And was she really up and about at the same time as her husband?

A scrawny creature dressed in an old military coat sidled out of the door; the dirty lapels were covered in rusting medals. There was a greasy top hat on its head and a dog end behind its ear. Nobby Nobbs was dragging one leg, and pinned to his coat with one of the medals was a wilted lilac bloom. He replaced an empty crate with a full one and carried the empty one back inside.

Vimes suppressed the urge to run. He forced himself to enter the shop and buy a banana and a bag of peanuts. “You’re a friend of the Librarian, sir?” Colon said jovially, weighing and pricing the merchandise like the jolly old monger that he was. An old pickles glass stood on the counter, holding another wilting lilac blossom.

Fighting down nausea, Vimes fled the scene. There was one more place where he had to go, and he’d been putting it off all day. The Small Gods cemetery was cool and quiet. The scent of lilac hung in the air in heady clouds. Vimes stood by the grave of John Keel, and then his legs gave out and he sank heavily onto the headstone. “I’m sorry,” he breathed. It was not enough, but there was nothing else. As he pulled out and lit his cigar, he stared at words carved into the stone: HOW DO THEY RISE UP, and at the hardboiled egg beneath them. Rosie Palm. He had to see her. She was another link to the past and the future. For some reason, it seemed important to see the people whose lives he had changed once and whose existence he’d be erasing in two days’ time. _What people do matters_ , Sweeper had said. Only once before had he realised just how much his decisions mattered, and that was only due to a faulty Dis-Organiser. Now, the results of his split-second blunder were parading before him.

Vimes patted the headstone, stood up and ambled down the moss-grown gravel. Outside the cemetery gates, the familiar odour of sizzling fat and undefinable pig tickled his nostrils. Dibbler looked older and rattier than ever, and – oh yes, his lilac bloom was wilting too. Vimes bought a pie and a sausage inna bun and ate both in a fit of death-defying resolve. He returned to the house in Easy Street before curfew; he had to pay Vetinari for his hospitality before relocating to Lawn tomorrow.

Vetinari wasn’t in. “His lordship comes and goes as he pleases,” Drumknott explained, and, after the commander’s follow-up questions, admitted that his lordship might be away on business.

“Looks like it’s just you and me tonight, eh, Mr Drumknott?” Vimes said grinning like a mad dog. “Do you have cards somewhere around the place? I’m sure the footmen know how to get their hands on a deck. And then you and me will play a game of Push The Wizard In The Ankh to while away the time.”

As hours and minutes were ticking away, Vimes learned that Drumknott was surprisingly confident around a deck of cards. Perhaps Vetinari had taught him a few tricks. Vetinari was certainly very dexterous. Vimes blushed. One lapse in concentration and his thoughts strayed to Vetinari’s hands and how nimble-fingered they were. He ground his teeth, braced himself - and heard Drumknott say: “Splash! I Pushed The Wizard In The Ankh (But Very Respectfully So). Good night, commander.”

In the corner, Wuffles woke up, emitting a cloud of fug. The little terrier watched them get up, whimpered and then gave a pitiful bark. Vimes scratched him behind the ears and wiped his hand on his trousers. It was past midnight. The dog was a creature of habit, he was waiting for his master who stayed out longer than usual.

Well, Vimes wasn’t waiting. He bathed, went to his room, took off his boots, sat down in an antique chair and lit a cigar. He didn’t stir when he heard something that might’ve been trapdoor on the roof opening and closing. He must have imagined the sound of footsteps on the stairs, because Vetinari moved noiselessly like a cat on the prowl. The sounds of a bath being run was unmistakable though: pumps pumping, pipes creaking, cistern gurgling and spitting like a sick dragon. He sat in the dark after the noises had died down. Suddenly, he got up, strode to the door and out onto the landing. He had taken a candle to light the way and felt rather foolish. He should have realised that the hall would be lit by sconces that sent shuddering shadows up the walls. He crept down the stairs soundlessly, counted the doors until he reached the one to Vetinari’s bedroom, took a deep breath and knocked.

“Come.”

Inside, all lights were extinguished. Vetinari stood at the window, looking out into the street where, against all probability, evidence and, indeed, the laws of narrative causality, ‘all was well’. As light from the hall flooded in, Vetinari’s reflexion surfaced in the windowpane. Their eyes met and Vimes stepped in on silent feet, closed the door with the barest audible ‘click’, put the candle on the table, walked over to Vetinari and stood behind him, breathing like a watchman in hot pursuit. Vetinari was completely still. He was doing that thing, Vimes knew, where he attempted to fade away, like a man lurking in the shadows. Were somebody in the street to look up and into the window, they wouldn’t see him stand there, watching them.

The flame of the candle gave off just enough light for both their reflexions to appear in the window. It rendered the edges of Vetinari’s face softer, the lines of his mouth less stern. Vimes waited for him to speak first. But Vetinari was good at silence; not just the sucking, hungry kind of silence, but, as it turned out, this soft, dreamy[6] sort of silence also. And as they stood, the space between them filled with the heat generated by frantic heartbeats, and Vimes stared at the back of Vetinari’s neck, where his shirt collar had ridden down to reveal the upside-down ‘V’ that had been branded into his skin by the hangman’s rope.

The screams in the street faded. Vetinari breathed, and Vimes raised a tingling hand and pressed it gently against the man’s back, just below his shoulder blade. The heat between them stirred, corporeal in its intensity, and pressed against Vimes’ chest, making it difficult to breathe. Vetinari didn’t give any indication that he felt it. Just as Vimes’ patience threatened to snap like the string of a bow in Detritus’ hands, Vetinari moved a thin hand and touched Vimes’ ghostly reflexion in the cold glass.

Vimes groaned, spun the man around, shoved him into the wall and dropped to his knees.

“Vimes!” Vetinari choked.

“Shut up!” Vimes hissed, tearing his trousers open. Vetinari’s dick was hard as a rock[7] and hot like a… a very hot thing[8]. Before he could think better of it, before he could think anything, Vimes hitched up the hem of Vetinari’s shirt and sucked his dick all the way in. He gagged as it filled his mouth with its heft, but he didn’t pull back. His forehead against Vetinari’s stomach, his nose against his groin, he sucked without moving his head, keeping the man in place with his hands around his hips. Vetinari was so skinny that there were deep hollows above his hipbones, where Vimes’ thumbs dug in. Vimes pulled back at the sound of a soft thud and saw that Vetinari’s head had fallen back against the wall. Above the bunched-up shirt, there was the long line of his throat, the sharp chin, and black hair that was rather a bit longer than that of the other Vetinari.

Thinking of him as _the other_ Vetinari helped. He wasn’t on his knees before the Patrician, licking his cock until its full length glistened with saliva. This was something completely different, something removed from the realm of reality.

Holding Vetinari in place with one hand, he wrapped the other around his cock. It was very thick; which was odd, considering that everything else about the man was so thin. It was also… it tasted good, in an acerbic sort of way. It prickled on his tongue and shot straight to his head; this really was like falling off the wagon. Vimes took a deep breath and sucked in Vetinari’s cock in one go to make the man squirm. His teeth scraped over the taut skin at the base and it was most certainly painful, because there was a gasp somewhere above his head and a hand clenched in his hair. Vimes’ cock jolted and he grabbed it through his trousers, palming himself desperately, while Lord fucking Vetinari was coming undone.

Gasping for air, Vimes pulled back, his lips burning from the friction, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The hand in his hair twitched and then relaxed, and for a moment it seemed like Vetinari was about to say something, but Vimes leaned in and licked across his stomach with the flat of his tongue. Vetinari’s cock brushed against the side of his face, and Vimes turned his head to trail his tongue along the hard length of flesh. He braced himself and opened his mouth wide, permitting Vetinari to thrust in, and this time, he didn’t withdraw until the man’s hips jerked and stilled, and his mouth was flooded with come.

Vimes shot to his feet and crushed his mouth against Vetinari’s in a ferocious, filthy kiss, more teeth than lips, raw need rather than finesse. Vetinari yanked at his hair and forced his head back, panting, and his eyes were those of an angry lynx.

‘Scorpions!’ Vimes brain supplied out of habit.

In the next instant, his breath was knocked out of him. His body tensed, elbow ready to strike, but he stamped down on that first vicious impulse. _It’ll come when you call_. But he _wasn’t_ calling it. The beast had no business here, because Vetinari had pushed him facedown onto the bed and spread atop him, heavy and firm and, paradoxically, safe. This way, they didn’t have to look into each other’s faces. And even though suspicious apprehension was rising in Vimes’ mind – Vetinari had been educated at the Assassins’ school, one heard stories of the goings-on in the dormitories – his body relaxed, as if it trusted the man not to hurt it. Not like that. Assassins didn’t lure people into their beds to rape, strangle or poison them; such a serious breach of etiquette would be considered the height of bad form.

Vimes turned his head slightly in a position where his face remained hidden and the pillow didn’t press against his injured eye. Even though the swelling had gone down, it was still very sore. Vetinari hadn’t commented on it, but now a long finger appeared in his line of vision. Vimes flinched. Then, there was the softest of touches and the Assassin’s fingertip alighted on his brow, trailing a feather-light line down to his temple, along the ridge of his jaw, down his neck. And with the suddenness of a cat extending its claws, feather turned to steel and a firm hand held him down by the nape of his neck. Vimes bucked and swore. Pushing his arse into Vetinari’s groin should not be so damn arousing. And yet there they were, grinding against each other, and Vimes thanked Blind Io for the almost-darkness of the room.

Vetinari’s other hand snaked between their bodies and then between his legs. How did the man do it? Vimes’ pants vanished. Oh, there was some fabric bunching around his hips, but it didn’t feel like clothing, if one were to define clothing as items designed to protect one’s decency. This was as far removed from decency as a clean-shaven dwarf in a miniskirt and stiletto heels was to deep-downers.

Those deadly fingers dipped between and below, and Vimes groaned into the pillow. Vetinari shifted, giving him room to move, which Vimes immediately used by arching his back and pushing his arse up. His mind was reeling. His cock lay ramrod hard in Vetinari’s fist. It really, really shouldn’t feel so good. Vetinari wasn’t even doing anything. _Yet_. There was just enough pressure around Vimes’ cock to make him want more. And so he did the sensible thing and thrust into the grip, which tightened.

“Slow down, commander.” A soft entreaty, not more than a breath on the night air, and Vimes shivered. This _was_ slow. Torturous even. The cold-blooded bastard wanted to make him beg for it. Vimes gritted his teeth, took a deep breath and bucked again, half-hoping to dislodge Vetinari, half-fearing that he’d succeed. This was Vetinari getting back at Vimes for, er, sucking him off. Somewhere in the depth of his rational mind Vimes was dimly aware that he shouldn’t think of this as retaliation. He shouldn’t think of it at all, he should shut out his thoughts and focus on the fingers curled around his cock, the way it was the centre of his body where heat blossomed and erupted in waves. Vetinari shifted again, bracing himself on one knee between Vimes’ legs, and pushed his arm in deeper, squeezing Vimes’ cock in a possessive hand. Vimes groaned, and then lay panting into the pillow, while his cock swelled and twitched in a grip that wasn’t his own.

“ _Fuck_.” He couldn’t be sure if he’d gasped it or merely thought it. Behind him came a low moan, a long exhale of breath that Vimes heard even through the rolls of thunder that deafened his ears. Vimes pulled in one knee and rubbed his arse against the heat and weight of Vetinari’s body. Another moan, louder this time, the friction between his legs withdrew, and Vetinari reached around for better access, flipping them both on the side until Vimes lay nestled against his body. The way he was holding Vimes’ cock was almost affectionate, but the way his hips dug insistently into his arse was not.

“What now?” Vimes whispered around the heart that had leapt into his throat. His pulse was racing, his mind was spinning, and when he looked down, he saw one slim thumb slide teasingly across the head of his cock. It came away trailing a glistening thread in its wake. The white hand fluttered towards his face and the thumb brushed his lips. Vimes sucked it in, the taste of his own semen mingling with Vetinari’s. Vetinari gasped.

Vimes bit down on the knuckle, and the man behind him exhaled sharply and pressed his open mouth to the back of his neck. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t right that his body was one trembling coil of craving, and Vetinari was still winding him up like a spring with his hands and his teeth and tongue. The taste of come still coated his mouth, but it was this… gentleness that made him feel dirty. _That_ had been just… desperate, animal desire, the beast coming unleashed and devouring; _this_ was deliberate, refined. Vetinari didn’t follow blind instinct, he took his time and turned this act of helpless rutting into a game.

Right now, he was playing Vimes with the hand back on his cock and that clever mouth hot and wet on his skin. The talented mouth that had spewed words that enraged Sam Vimes beyond all measure – _and in which Vetinari had held the lilac bloom as he fought side by side with Vimes’ men_. Vimes groaned. Fear and lust and pain churned in a confusing mess in his guts. All he wanted was to go home, and all he was getting was this heat and bone-melting desire that made him thrust his cock into Vetinari’s fist.

The man slithered his other arm under Vimes’ body and slung it around his torso, hand splayed over his chest and fingers toying with the buttons of his shirt. Vimes decided to participate, at last. He unbuttoned his shirt and motioned Vetinari’s hand inside; it scurried under the folds of the fabric like a large white spider. Goosebumps rose as skin slid against skin. Vetinari’s palm was softer than Vimes’ own. Hah! Of course it was. _His lordship_ hadn’t spent his whole life wielding a sword and a whole assortment of improvised weapons against men without any code of honour whatsoever.

A meandering fingertip grazed the kink in Vimes’ once-broken collarbone and then a scar across his ribs, making him shudder. The finger returned with single-minded purpose, and Vimes groaned. “Interesting,” Vetinari muttered somewhere by his ear. “Was that pleasure or pain, commander?” He tightened his grip around Vimes’ cock on the downward stroke, and Vimes yelped in surprise. “Or both?”

In the next moment, the hand disappeared, leaving his dick cold and bereft and twitching against his stomach. Vimes grabbed it and began to wank himself off, hard and fast, and then the thin hand was back. Jutting out from beneath the loose cuff, the sharp wrist bone lent the arm a deceptive fragility. Fingers curled around Vimes’ hand, followed the up-and-down motion as if memorising how Vimes liked to do it, and then further down, skipping over his forearm, fingertips scraping over his balls, dipping into the sweat-slick crevice between his thighs, cupping him in a damp grip. _Vetinari had licked his palm to ease the friction_.

That was a good idea. Vimes spat in his own hand and watched his spit mingle with the slick wetness around the tip of his dick. Damp heat and the pressure of teeth on his shoulder, and Vimes shivered again, curving his spine into the man’s bony chest. And then – _oh_. He hadn’t noticed it before, wrapped up in his own arousal as he was, but there was a very distinct pressure behind him that had nothing to do with hipbones. Vetinari was hard again. There was something there behind the bars of calculation and composure, something hot and human and _hungry_ , and Vimes resolved to tear out the bars and pour in the fire of his own longing and rage to thaw the ice of Vetinari’s self-control.

But now… _oh fuck_. He groaned again, lust coiling in a tighter and tighter spiral, and still Vetinari hardly did anything. Vimes let go of his cock and pushed it into Vetinari’s hand. “You do it,” he snarled, pushing his pants further down his thighs and groping blindly behind him until his questing fingers found Vetinari’s dick. He tried to twist in the circle of the man’s arms, but-

“Not now.” So soft again, a mere stir in the texture of the air. As if Vetinari didn’t trust his voice not to betray his arousal at normal volume. Vimes made a mental note to make the man talk next time – _and fuck it all to hell, he was thinking about the next time already, and this time wasn’t even over yet, this was not supposed to happen_ – and he closed his eyes and gave himself over to the Assassin’s hand. His orgasm hit him like the flame of a dragon, slamming him into Vetinari.

Gentle hands closed around his hips as he lay panting and drained, his mind finally, blissfully empty. Vetinari was shifting him again, rolling him on his front, onto a pillow that cushioned his groin. Then, the pressure of a hard dick screwing itself between his thighs from behind. Vimes’ body jolted and clamped down, but the hands were back, holding him in place. “Just this,” Vetinari breathed into his shoulder. He jerked his hips, shoving his cock into the gap between Vimes’ legs. “Permit me?”

There it was: a crack, a hitching of breath, the throaty timbre of a voice smothered by layers of lust. He was murmuring one-syllable words, and Vimes promised himself that he would get _more_. His arm shot out and he grabbed Vetinari’s hair, tugging his head down… Vetinari hissed. Vimes let go.

“Sorry!” he said, in true contrition. _Shit_. The man’s neck was one massive wound, and he’d forgotten. He’d forgotten. To be fair, he might have just shot out his brains through his dick, because everything had gone soft and fuzzy around the edges as he drifted in post-orgasmic haze. He reached out and touched Vetinari’s hair. “Yes,” he whispered.

And there it came, the sharp intake of breath that would escape in a moan if only… _Yes_. Vimes arched his back and thrust up, and Vetinari groaned into his shoulder. _Fuck_ , Vimes’ foggy brain supplied; and it was. They were fucking against each other, still half-dressed and more than half-crazed with adrenaline. Anger and terror had driven him for days, and the only way to rid himself of all this was by coming again and again under Vetinari’s hands.

The world had gone mad. But at this time, in this place, it had mercifully narrowed down to hot, sweat-soaked skin and the sound of flesh slapping against flesh and harsh, stifled moans. All softness had gone out of Vimes’ life, his body and soul were rubbed raw, and the only comfort he found was with this abrasive man. Probably one of those paradoxes wizards always talked about.

There was a huge gush of wetness, hands grasping and clenching, the heavy weight on Vimes’ back pressing him into the bed, and Vetinari’s ragged breath that settled like vapour on Vimes’ neck. The weight shifted, hands scrambled and fumbled the pillow from beneath Vimes’ groin and dumped it onto the floor. He should get up and go. And he would, he just needed two minutes to rest and to regain control over his suddenly gelatinous limbs. The candle must have gone out, because there was nothing but blackness around him and inside his head. Death’s merciful half-brother, dreamless sleep, claimed him with gentle hands.

End of chapter 4

[1] Jason

[2] Jason again

[3] Handily combining lesson and exhibit A and B in one comprehensive, black-clad package.

[4] Though to be fair, Vimes was yet to meet a recruit who was blowing snot bubbles and swiping them up with his tongue.

[5] Vimes felt vaguely that there was something off about this job title, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

[6] The kind of dream that contributes to piles of laundry.

[7] Part of troll anatomy.

[8] Vimes’ brain supplied ‘the filling of Dibbler’s deep-fried mostly-apple pies’, but he dismissed it as too disrespectful.


	5. Trousers of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How do they rise up_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Readers, happy Glorious 25th of May!

Vimes woke up in his own bed. The first few minutes after waking were spent with hiding his face in the cushions. He’d done the grown-up thing and snuck out in the dead of night, but he hadn’t followed it up with washing or brushing his teeth before going to sleep, and the taste and smell of Vetinari clung to his every pore. This was like waking up with a hangover, only it wasn’t his head that was throbbing. Once all the cringing had been accomplished, he smartened himself up the best he could, stole from the room, tiptoed down the stairs and crept into the bathroom, locking the door behind him with a sigh of relief. He forced himself to look himself in the eye while shaving, put the razor down on the shelf and aligned the blade hubwards to keep it sharp. He then got in the tub, used almost one whole bar of mercifully unscented soap to cleanse his skin, and rubbed his scalp vigorously, well aware of how doggedly scents clung to hair. He cursed himself for not having bought his own clothes yesterday; as it was, he had to put on Vetinari’s again, which, though freshly laundered, smelled of the man.

Then, he went in search of breakfast.

There was still the small matter of paying Vetinari back for clothes and lodging. With his advance pay in his pocket, Vimes felt a wealthy man. But in view of all that happened last night, he could not stride into the breakfast room and slam a handful of dollars on the table. Not if he wanted to leave the house with his limbs and head attached.

It was no surprise whatsoever to find Vetinari in the breakfast room, reading, a cup of tea frozen en route to his mouth. He looked up from his book, and Vimes’ mouth went dry while his bones turned to water. Vetinari was virtually sprawled in his chair, more loose-limbed than Vimes had ever seen him. He wasn’t wearing a black robe but something grey and shapeless and… and… he had no business looking so domestic and tame. The bastard hadn’t even shaved yet. In a word: he looked well shagged out, and he was flaunting it for his household to see.

Vimes sat down quickly, before he could embarrass himself.

“Morning,” he said gruffly.

“Good morning, your grace,” Vetinari said with exquisite politeness. “Did you sleep well?”

“What?”

“Would you like tea or coffee?”

The door opened on cue, and a footman or possibly Dark Clerk came in with a tray. He put down a pot of tea the colour of Ankh water in front of Vimes. Vetinari delicately pushed the sugar bowl towards him with his fork.

“Was your job hunt successful?” Vetinari asked while Vimes busied himself with toast and butter. He was famished.

“I’m starting tonight,” he said, staring past Vetinari’s head at a spot above his shoulder. “I got my advance pay, I can pay you back for,” he tugged at his shirt collar, “this. And everything.”

“That really won’t be necessary.”

“No.” His gaze shifted and locked with Vetinari’s. “I insist.”

The man shrugged. “Whatever you wish.” He did not stab Vimes in the eye with a fork; instead, he held a piece of buttered toast under the table, where soft slurping noises told Vimes that Wuffles was partaking in his master’s breakfast. “Did you find the people you were looking for?”

No, Vetinari didn’t have to stab him with silverware if he could do so with a few well-chosen words. Vimes felt his hair bristle. That was what Angua meant when she spoke of a bad hair day.

“The people I was looking for aren’t welcome here,” he ground out. “This city, it’s so human,” he spat the word. “Do you want to know what happened to my best officers, your lordship? Sergeant Detritus is a splatter chained to the wall at the Mended Drum, high on slab, sleek, slice, slide, sliver, slump, slunkie, slurp and, possibly, honk. Sergeant Angua of Überwald is hunting humans with her brother, who is a right murderous bastard with very definitive ideas about the superiority of werewolves over other species. Sergeant _Cherie_ Littlebottom slaves away in a mine under Bonk and sings about gold, pretending she’s a he who doesn’t care about things like lipstick and bas couture. Constable Dorfl slaughters cows, sheep, goats, chickens and turkeys and turns them into roasts and sausages day and night, without pause and without a word of complaint. That’s because he can’t speak, your lordship. He never learned to make his own words. Constable Reg Shoe was killed for good when the mob came for him, because Lord Snapcase thinks the undead are an eyesore. Hah! That’s from a man who put three beheaded corpses on the city council!”

“You found all this out in one day?”

“No!” Vimes was breathing in short, sharp bursts, like a man struggling for control. “I found out about Dorfl at the slaughterhouse and I saw Detritus with my own eyes. I didn’t see the others, I didn’t have to. That was what we policemen call deduction. I deduced what happened to them based on the evidence presented to me, to wit the way this city is run.” He stared down into his cup of tea and added, “I think I traced down Carrot.” He looked up and into Vetinari’s face. “Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson was sixteen when came to Ankh-Morpork, wishing nothing more than to serve and to protect. Unluckily for him, a massive dragon was setting fire to the city, and the boy, gods bless him, wanted to be a hero. He hadn’t met me, you see. He met other men instead, and he rode out to fight the dragon.” Vimes rubbed his face. “Nobody could tell me what happened to him, he might’ve got away. If he did, he probably went back to his mine in Copperhead, and I don’t blame him.”

“I might be able to assist you in finding out what happened to the ladies,” Vetinari said.

“Fred and Nobby got away,” Vimes said and looked up sharply. “What did you say?”

“Sergeants Angua and Littlebottom,” Vetinari said. “I have what you might call a direct line to Überwald.”

“Lady Margolotta,” Vimes growled. “A _vampire_.”

Vetinari gave him a Look. “Really, commander? After what you’ve just said?”

“Vampires’re different,” Vimes said. “They aren’t team players. They enjoy power over humans.”

“As do many humans,” Vetinari said smoothly. “Lady Margolotta would say that men like you object to vampires on principle. It’s the… penetrative aspect.”

Vimes’ face went wooden[1]. Vetinari’s voice came from a long way away. “As I was saying, commander, I might be able to help you track down the ladies. Judging by her name, Sergeant Angua of Überwald is a daughter of the Baron’s, ah, clan in the Old Country, am I correct? In that case, one letter will suffice. I can dispatch it even today, as well as one inquiring about Sergeant Littlebottom. If she does work in a mine under Beyonk, the Low King should be able to help.”

“You know the Low King?”

“Why the tone of surprise, commander? You intimated yourself the other day that I am well-connected.”

“Who is the Low King?”

“Rhys Rhysson.” They eyed each other carefully, like two cats.

“I assumed Rhys Rhysson was elected by Ankh-Morpork dwarfs,” Vimes said. “Who aren’t here now.”

“The Low King – or rather the Low Queen, but he hasn’t adopted this title – was elected because, as I understand it, the supporters of the other two candidates cancelled each other out, and he was too insignificant to have powerful enemies.”

“You know he’s a she,” Vimes said flatly.

“I do.”

“How?”

“The Low King happens to trust me,” Vetinari said.

“You sure it wasn’t your vampire friend who passed on this bit of gossip?” Vimes said with biting sarcasm.

“Yes.” Vetinari sighed and plunged his hand into a hidden pocket. He pulled out something with an evil glint and edge. “I value good craftsmanship, commander, and dwarfish craftsmanship is the best there is,” he said. “The Low King appreciates my custom, as I, in turn, appreciate the artefacts his subjects supply me with.”

“Killed anyone interesting lately?” Vimes said chirpily, holding the blade into the light.

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Vetinari reached once again into his pocket and produced a scrap of paper. Vimes took it.

It said _1) PENNY_

Vimes recognised his own writing.

“What is it?” he asked, even though he knew.

“Fifty per cent of the commission,” Vetinari said calmly. “The Guild takes fifty per cent, I dropped it off at the porter’s lodge on my way home. You didn’t go through the Guild, of course, which is considered poor etiquette, but since you are foreign to these parts, you might be forgiven.”

“I’m not foreign to these parts, dammit!” Vimes crumpled the piece of paper and tossed it across the table. “I’m foreign to this time. You killed Carcer last night.”

“Inhumed him,” Vetinari said with a long-suffering sigh. “I really wish you’d learn the correct terminology, commander. It’s not that hard.”

“You killed him and then you came back home, had a bath and went to bed with me.” Fury churned within him, battling for dominance with other, rather conflicting, emotions.

“If you recall correctly, it was you, commander, who went to bed with me. You came to me.” Vetinari’s voice made it perfectly clear that he considered the topic rather tedious. Vimes might have thought of him as insouciant and of his tone as blasé, but it was much more satisfying to think of him as that bloody bastard and be done with it.

 _Carcer was dead_.

“This is not how it should’ve happened,” Vimes said.

“How would you have preferred it to happen?” Vetinari said sweetly.

“I mean Carcer’s death!”

“But of course. I didn’t for one moment assume that you didn’t.”

“There should’ve been a trial. He should’ve been convicted and executed by the law.”

“Which law would that be, commander? Your faith in the legal system, I have to admit, is commendable. Please bear in mind, however, that the Patrician’s chief advisor on the city council is best known for running around in circles very fast, not for his grasp of matters of jurisdiction.”

“He died thirty years too late. You should’ve killed him sooner, if you were going to do it anyway,” Vimes’ mouth said, while his brain thought, ‘I should’ve killed him then and there.’

“There has never before been a commission.”

“You saw what he was, you could’ve got rid of him.”

“Get rid of people I disapprove of, commander? I, an Assassin?”

This was it: the heart of the dilemma. Vimes had always resented the way Vetinari used him and everybody else as pawns[2] in his political game of Thud. But without Vetinari’s iron rule, there was no order. And without order, there was no law.

Vetinari had domesticated the wilderness. He ploughed the soil of chaos with the iron teeth of his mind[3]; he fattened geese that lay golden eggs; he sowed seeds of pragmatism that grew into grains of wealth, he divided the field into allotments and made the gangs of Ankh-Morpork look after their patches. He flailed and pruned and felled and, oh yeah, composted. He took a look at the steaming midden and turned it into fertile earth. And then, he dangled the crop before the noses of the other cities and species of the Disc like fat carrots in front of asses and turned feral beasts into beasts of burden.

In the here and now, Ankh-Morpork was a wasteland, a swamp and a jungle rolled into one, overrun by scorpions and dragons. Oh, and monkeys; not the cute cheeky ones that danced for the organ grinder, but the vicious ones that threw excrements at each other. Vimes’ heart bled for the ravaged city. He wanted to go home so much, the longing was like a physical ache that he carried around in his bones. He had to go back and put things right.

But it didn’t work like that, did it? This trouser leg would not magically disappear. It existed _because of_ him, but not _for_ him. It had unfolded after he’d failed to save his own life, and it would continue to exist when he left. Detritus’ face floated before his mind’s eye: the red eyes of a troll who’d never experienced humanity. He’d remain chained to that wall until the day he turned to stone. And then, the dark part of Vimes’ mind supplied, he’d end up as a rockery in somebody’s garden.

Vimes had three days to turn the fates around. He rubbed his finger absentmindedly, where the mark of Chaos tingled occasionally, as if to remind him of its existence. He’d done it before, he could do it again. It started last night with the death of Carcer and it would continue today. The city wouldn’t know what hit her when Sergeant Vimes walked her streets again.

Vimes’ eyes met Vetinari’s and his pulse fluttered. He could’ve sworn that the man knew exactly what he was thinking and that he was… intrigued, in that cold, clinical way of his. The door opened to admit a servant, who put down an egg cup in front of Vimes.

“Your hardboiled egg, commander,” Vetinari said once the servant left the room. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with Truth or Justice. Not even,” he smiled that lightning-quick smile of his, “with Reasonably Priced Love. A hardboiled egg, however, is an achievable first step.”

Vimes took the egg out of the cup, laid it on the table and beheaded it with great precision. The inside was very hot.

“It’s not the only thing that’s hard around here, is it?” he said into Vetinari’s face, before letting his gaze trail down pointedly. “Under these loose clothes of yours, _your lordship_.” His gaze snapped back to the man’s face and he knew he was right.

For a moment, time froze.

“Do you wish me to bed you, commander?”

“What, now?”

Vetinari closed the book that lay on the table before him and placed his open palm on the cover in a definitive gesture.

“What time do you have to report for duty?”

Sam Vimes was living in a temporal cul-de sac. Nothing that happened now would have any bearing on his life back in his own time: nothing could move sideways from one trouser leg to the other. That was why he had to go back and start anew.

And that was also why he could make lo… well, no, not make love, obviously, but go to bed with Lord Vetinari. It would mean nothing once he was back home, as in his timeline it would never have happened.

There was something wrong with this line of argument, but he wasn’t going to analyse it too deeply. Not now when he stood in the Assassin’s bedroom in the middle of the day and hard as a blow to the head. Come to think of it, he might be concussed. He probably hadn’t recovered from the fall to the library floor yet.

That was as good an explanation as any, and much preferable to the terrifying suspicion that he was here because it felt good. Paperwork, traffic control and red tights notwithstanding – his life had been good. And now it was gone, and the one thing that felt good was the sensation of touching Vetinari. Some god, somewhere, was having a good laugh at his expense.

Vetinari locked the door and turned to face him.

“Weapons,” Vimes said, broke off, cleared his throat and tried again: “Your weapons, you’ll have to remove them. I don’t want to get stabbed by accident.”

Vetinari smiled a vague little smile, stalked around Vimes, walked to the desk and then there was the clink of metal. When he turned back to Vimes, Vimes saw a small heap of death piled neatly on the polished wood. For a moment, he panicked. Not because of Vetinari’s private armoury, but because there was nothing else that stood between them, apart from their clothes, and they’d be removing those next. The question was how. He couldn’t possibly strip under the man’s cool gaze, but undressing each other would be far too intimate. The best thing would be if they did it fully dressed, preferably standing up, a quick and dirty ruttage up against the wall. That wasn’t going to happen, he knew that. It wouldn’t be enough. Bloody hell, he should’ve stopped himself when it was still possible two nights ago. It was just a wank then, but one wank was one too many.

“Anything else you need me to do, commander?”

Vimes shook his head.

Vetinari peeled off the shapeless grey garment and stood in his shirt and trousers, like he had done in the cell; only now Vimes saw the outline of his dick under the fabric and his mouth started to water. Vetinari walked over to the bed and sank down on the mattress. “In your own time.”

The man was an Assassin, Vimes reminded himself as he approached the bed on stiff[4] legs. Vimes hated Assassins, always had, always would. The bed was far too narrow, but the mattress was good quality, he noticed it last night. He half-knelt, half-crouched on the edge, and his gaze not so much strayed as sauntered nonchalantly to Vetinari’s crotch, where it stayed. Two nights ago, he’d been fantasising about ripping off clothes and about nails and teeth digging into flesh and lips. He wished for that desperate desire to flood him again; it would make everything easier. Instead, he reached out and gently touched Vetinari’s sleeve. The man shifted, making space for Vimes, and flung open his arms.

 _Oh fuck_. He was sinking down into what had to be called an embrace, and then… surely they weren’t going to kiss… ah, yes, they were. Lips parted under his, and the scratch of stubble was rough against his own clean-shaven skin. It’d been ages since he’d kissed anyone but Sybil. And here he was, kissing bloody Vetinari, and he couldn’t stop, because stopping would mean they had to move on to something else, and he wasn’t sure he was ready for it. Vetinari’s mouth was hot and mobile, and there was something deeply erotic about the way he was kissing him with his lips alone rather than with his tongue.

A hand alighted on his arse and pulled him in. Vimes groaned, and the harsh exhale of breath against his mouth reminded him that he was determined to hear Vetinari moan. Whatever it took. He tilted his head, deepened the kiss and… moaned at the soft, slick brush of Vetinari’s tongue across his lip. He sensed smugness radiate from the man, felt it in the curve of his mouth and in the way that hard, thin body arched into him.

Vimes broke the kiss and, holding Vetinari’s head in place by his hair, dragged his mouth along the ridge of his jaw, down to his ear, parted his lips over the spot in his neck where his pulse was beating a frenzied gahanka[5]. _Had Vetinari ever permitted the vampire to bite him?_ An iron grip stopped him.

“Did I hurt you?” Vimes asked.

“Not yet,” Vetinari whispered. “Do be careful, commander.”

“I will.” He pulled back, undid the top buttons of Vetinari’s high collar and loosened it. The welts and bruises were no longer as raw as two days before, but still very colourful. Vimes drew his fingertips over Vetinari’s collarbone, and this time his hand wasn’t pushed away. “Let me see?”

Vetinari rolled his head to the side without a word. _Permission_ , Vimes thought, unbuttoning the man’s shirt clumsily. He stared down at his bared neck and voiced the question, at last. “Why did you let them do this?”

“Because I knew that if I survived, I would be granted freedom.”

“There must be better ways to ensure freedom. This was bloody stupid.”

“Reckless, perhaps, but not stupid. It worked.”

“Yeah, your schemes always do, don’t they? Can’t you do something straightforward for once?”

Vetinari smiled and shoved his hand between Vimes’ legs. Vimes yelped.

“Is this straightforward enough for you, commander?” Vetinari asked silkily, while his fingers were… moving, gripping, ye gods, his trousers had come undone and he had no idea how.

Vimes grinned. Well, he showed his teeth. “Not so fast, your lordship.”

The hand in his pants stilled. “You’re right. I suppose there is no hurry today. Unless,” he did something with his hand that made sparks go off before Vimes’ eyes, “your second thoughts will chase you away.”

“Not me,” Vimes said, with throbbing heart and cock. “I don’t have to be anywhere until tonight.”

“Good,” Vetinari said simply and pulled his hand out. He lifted it to his mouth and licked his palm with slow, deliberate strokes of his tongue, and then wrapped his fingers around Vimes’ cock again, sliding his hand up and down smoothly. “Is this slow enough to please you?”

Vimes stared down at him. He’d never expected Vetinari to be so… shameless. As if jerking off another man was just one of those things that one did between breakfast and reign of terror. It must’ve been his Assassin education. There was nothing for it, he had to grab the bull by the horns, as it were. Vimes moved his hand to Vetinari’s groin, cupped the bulge there and trailed his thumb along the hard length of his cock. There it was: the short, quick inhale, the clenching thigh muscles, the rhythm of the hand around Vimes’ cock faltering. Vimes angled his wrist and ground the heel of his hand against Vetinari’s cock.

The man’s lips parted around an unmistakable moan, and as Vimes leaned in the devious bastard pulled him down and sucked in his lower lip, dragging a pained groan out of Vimes’ throat. Vimes’ hips jolted, driving his dick into that clever hand. He thrust his tongue into Vetinari’s mouth, and, oh, the heat was boiling again, that heady blend of anger and lust that made him want to-

“Take off your clothes!” Vimes growled, pulling back and fumbling with his own buttons. Vetinari let go of his cock, pushed himself up and swatted Vimes’ fingers aside.

“Permit me.” His voice had dropped to a low murmur, and there was definitely colour in those pale cheeks. He undid the whole row of buttons in a flash and pushed the shirt down Vimes’ shoulders. All of a sudden, Vimes shivered. Goosebumps trickled down from his sternum to his groin, and Vetinari leaned in and licked across his hard nipple with the flat of his tongue.

“ _Fuck_!” Vimes exploded, from surprise rather than sensation. The attack had been unexpected, and Vetinari’s mouth continued to torment him with licks and bites across his chest.

“How did you break your clavicle?” Vetinari’s hot breath settled on his collarbone as he traced its curve with his lips.

“I don’t remember,” Vimes gasped. “A chase probably.”

“Were you in hot pursuit, commander?”

“Why…” He pulled himself together and Vetinari’s head away by his hair. “Why do you want to know?”

“I am merely making conversation.”

Vimes had wanted to make the man talk, but not like this. Vetinari was far too coherent. Vimes wanted him writhing and panting, and coming helplessly. He moved his hands down Vetinari’s chest, unbuttoned his shirt roughly and splayed one hand over Vetinari’s heart. Yep, still there. Still beating. Concealed beneath the armour of ribs and firm, hard muscles. There was nothing soft about the man’s body. Unlike Vimes, whose comfortable life and meals had left him rather more padded out than he liked, Vetinari was all bones and sinews. Propped up on his arm, his head tilted back, his hair mussed, his shirt open, he looked up at Vimes. His expression might’ve been called composed if not for the glistening lips and half-lidded eyes. On second thought, ‘debauched’ might be rather more accurate.

Vimes swung a leg over Vetinari’s hips and straddled him fully. “Off!” He tugged at the man’s shirt. It came off, and then the rest of their clothes disappeared too in a confusion of limbs as they tried to accommodate their arms and legs in the narrow space. At some point, Vimes could’ve sworn that Vetinari’s wrist passed through his forearm, and gods only knew how they managed to get rid of their pants without pushing each other off the bed. There was an old scar on Vetinari’s upper arm, but there was none on his thigh. The Gonne had never targeted him, if it had ever existed.

Vimes asked the question. He explained the matter.

“Gonne?” Vetinari frowned. “That doesn’t sound like one of Leonard’s inventions. The way you describe it, he would have called it High-Velocity-Lead-Pellets-Shooting-Metal-Tube. The principle, I admit, sounds like him. He must have died before he could complete it…”

“Died, eh?” Vimes said. “Dropped dead unexpectedly, did he?”

Beneath him, between his legs, Vetinari shifted, hips arching and spine curving like a wave. He crossed his arms behind his head and regarded Vimes’ coolly. “While I do appreciate that you refrain from whispering sweet nothings in my ear, commander, I am staggered at your choice of conversation topics. Or does talking about death, to use a common phrase, _turn you on_?”

Vimes’ cock jumped. There was nothing he could do about it, hearing Vetinari use the common phrase like a filthy oath did something to him. Vetinari’s gaze dropped, the corners of his mouth twitched, and his hand curled around Vimes’ cock. “Does it really?” he murmured.

“No!” Vimes squeezed out through clenched teeth. Oh but this was maddening. The things that Vetinari was doing with his hand and with his _voice_ , how could the man wield so much power with such little effort?

He let himself fall forward, ramming his hips into the firm body and his cock into the firm grip. His abrupt assault knocked the air out of Vetinari’s lungs, who groaned under Vimes’ weight. “Yeah?” Vimes whispered viciously, open-mouthed against Vetinari’s skin, digging his teeth into the taut muscle of his shoulder. Just like that the anger was back, and with it the desperate desire to drown his sorrows in the intoxicating heat and friction. Vetinari’s arm was squashed between their bodies, but he still managed to move his fingers somehow. There was damp pressure and a shock ran through Vimes, from his groin to the very tips of his fingers and toes: his cock slid against Vetinari’s in the slick vice of the man’s hand. Sweat pooled between them as they ground into each other, and then, at last, Vetinari panted and his hips jolted as his body tumbled out of his control. Vimes pressed his mouth to the man’s neck, taking care not to graze the rope marks, and clawed at his hipbone to hold fast to him. Vetinari turned his head and his lips brushed Vimes’ forehead. “Wait,” he breathed. “Not yet.” He relaxed his grip and Vimes groaned in frustration. He’d been so close.

Vetinari’s muscles flexed and he flipped them both over, balancing nimbly on the narrow mattress and holding Vimes so that he didn’t drop to the floor, even though most of his body rolled over the edge momentarily. He crouched above Vimes on his hands and knees, his face for once feral and framed by the veil of black hair. Then, he ducked his head and kissed Vimes fully on the mouth, with tongue and a hint of teeth that nipped at Vimes’ lower lip. They were both panting as they broke apart, but Vetinari didn’t let him catch his breath, for his mouth trailed lower, down his sternum, over the swell of his stomach, and then straight to his groin. Moist heat enveloped his dick, and he was sinking deeper and deeper into Vetinari’s mouth, until his world narrowed down to this one point of intense pleasure. One long arm snaked under his leg and wrapped around his thigh, fingers resting on Vimes’ hip, holding him down, stopping him from thrusting up too hard. Vimes reached down blindly and threaded his fingers through Vetinari’s. The pressure around his cock intensified, the man was sucking him off in earnest, while the blood in Vimes’ veins thundered and seethed like the devil’s own potion.

Suddenly, it stopped. Vimes swore filthily. “You fucking…” Blinking his eyes open, he glanced down and saw Vetinari wipe his mouth on the back of his hand. For the span of two breaths, they stared at each other. “…Bastard,” Vimes finished lamely. “Don’t stop.”

“I won’t.” The man was breathless. Vimes saw him swallow, and then Vetinari placed a hand on the inside of Vimes’ thigh, just below his groin, and pushed lightly. “Open your legs.”

Vimes did. His body obeyed without consulting his brain. Vetinari licked his lips, looked down at Vimes’ aching cock and licked up the full length from Vimes’ balls to the tip. Vimes’ head fell back into the pillow. His cock slipped back into that vicious mouth, all the way in, until teeth clamped around the sides at the base: the sharp stab of pain a counterpoint to dizzying pleasure. Vetinari sucked, Vimes’ head spun, and a finger trailed between his legs and…

“Oh fuck!” Vimes exploded, jolting off the mattress and then sinking down, because…

He knew how it worked, but never before had he… There was a finger slipping slowly inside him. Vetinari stopped, waited for Vimes to start breathing again, and then did something that blackened Vimes’ vision. It only lasted for a few moments, and then the finger withdrew, the hot mouth tightened and then relaxed around his dick, and Vetinari released him gently and crawled back up. His cock dragged wetly over Vimes’ thigh, nudged Vimes’ balls and nestled next to Vimes’.

“How do you want it?” Vetinari whispered in a voice that was so thick with arousal that the words were almost inaudible.

Vimes pulled him down wordlessly and closed his fist around both of them. There was a hiss somewhere by his ear as Vetinari’s head dropped onto his shoulder. His mouth was hot and wet, gasping into Vimes’ skin as finally, finally the last remnants of composure shattered and Vetinari fucked himself into his hand. Vimes didn’t feel him come, because his own orgasm hit him like a sock full of bricks and he blackened out, even as his body thrust desperately into the wet heat between them. There was wetness when he opened his eyes and his senses caught up, a lot of it. Against his chest and shoulder, Vetinari’s chest was heaving with sharp, stabbing breaths. They lay in silence, bodies cooling and calming and relaxing into each other. Eventually, Vetinari unstuck his arm from where it clung to the hairs on Vimes’ chest and his leg from where he’d thrown it over Vimes’ thigh and stretched out on his side next to Vimes.

“Your bed's too narrow,” Vimes said, blinking up at the ceiling.

“I don’t often entertain in it.”

“Really!” Vimes was intrigued. He’d never speculated about the Patrician’s bedroom habits, even though he knew that the rumours ranged from celibate to dungeon full of playmates of all genders and species. “It certainly feels like you know what you’re doing.”

“Ah that!” Vetinari waved a hand vaguely. “The physical aspects are easy, it’s just a matter of pulling the right levers, as it were, in the correct order.”

“You've got to know where the levers are,” Vimes muttered under his breath, thinking of the finger that had _done something_ that had never been done before.

“I do have a body, commander.”

“I noticed.”

A soft huff of breath might have been a laugh. Vimes frowned. Just when he’d thought his life couldn’t become any more insane... The words ‘what now?’ lined up in his mind and were hopping from foot to foot, impatient to burst out and cause havoc. Vetinari might dismiss him, now that the deed was done. Whatever Vetinari was, he was certainly not one for lounging in bed all day. Whereas in the here and now the bed had become Vimes’ haven, the one place where his thoughts were subdued and the pain of body and soul numbed under Vetinari’s anodyne influence.

Vetinari shifted. An intake of breath sounded like he wanted to speak. Vimes got there first with the first question that popped into his mind: “Did Carcer know who killed him?”

“Inhumed him,” Vetinari said quietly. “Naturally. The subject to the contract is to be informed who commissioned his inhumation whenever possible.”

Vimes’ heart raced. “The famous Assassin code of honour,” Vimes said acidly. “What did you tell him, who sent you?”

“Samuel Vimes… and John Keel. He was unpleasantly surprised, you’ll be pleased to know. I believe he didn’t appreciate that it was I who fulfilled the contract. Captain Carcer never had a particular liking for me.”

“He hated your guts.”

“Yes. Quite.”

“When they send us back, I’ll make sure to drag him back to my time,” Vimes said. “He’ll be tried and he’ll hang. The Patrician – that is, er, you – will see to it.”

“Yes,” Vetinari said simply.

There was nothing more to say. Vimes closed his eyes, willing his brain to show him the memories he needed. He’d only been away for a week, but they were fading fast. He had to go back, he had to put things right. Even if it meant killing Vetinari.

The price was too high. He wouldn’t be able to do it, not even for… Sybil and his child.

No. He’d strangle the man with his bare hands to save Sybil and his child.

After all, he’d arrested Vetinari once, killing him was just a next step.

“You don’t approve of me in my role as Patrician, do you, commander?” Vetinari said. “No more than you approve of me in my role as an Assassin.”

“You do what you have to do,” Vimes said. “We all do.”

“Hm. I have a vague recollection of you arresting me. Did that happen?”

“Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“You told me to cuff you.”

“Ah. That’s a yes then.”

“I’m not sure I can kill you.”

Vetinari was silent for a moment. When he started to talk, it was in a deliberate, slow tone, as if he was gathering his thoughts even as he spoke. “What you must understand, commander, is that I do not cherish the idea of getting killed. However, it will be a quick, clean death. You will see to it. I am not sacrificing myself for you or your family, not even for myself – by that I mean my younger self. I am, however, willing to hold myself accountable for what happened. You spoke of your blunder, and how it changed the progress of history. I, too, made a wrong choice: I should not have left Ankh-Morpork and gone to Genua. I should have stayed here, like I did in your past, and taken charge of the city when it was offered to me.”

 _Yeah, you should’ve_ , Vimes’ brain thought. His mouth said: “Snapcase was after you; he had a dossier prepared on you and two other Assassins. They were murdered.”

“Whereas I went to Überwald and escaped that deplorable fate. I should have returned after the excitement of the transitional period died down.”

“You weren’t to know,”

“No. Now, however, I do know, and this is why I wish to make amends. I cannot make this reality unhappen. But I can help make the other reality happen _as well_ so that they’ll exist side by side, and maybe some people’s lives will be better for it.”

“Yeah, they will,” Vimes muttered, thinking of the face of Detritus, a dumb lump of rocks chained to a wall. “But not _these_ people’s lives.”

“Changing these people’s lives, in this reality is,” Vetinari hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat, “difficult.”

“But not impossible.”

“No,” Vetinari conceded. “Not impossible.”

Vimes closed his eyes. He’d been afraid of this. The _other_ option, the _other_ path open to him. If he stayed here, he could make a change, he knew he could. Everything happened for a reason, he’d been told, and perhaps this was why he’d ended up here: as living proof to Vetinari, who was disaffected and disillusioned, that it could be done.

“You’d need people,” he said.

“People can be arranged.”

“If we went back,” Vimes said, despair rising like sulphuric bubbles from the Ankh, “you wouldn’t have to die. You could stay there, nobody’d know who you are.”

“And become my own mentor?” Vetinari smiled grimly. “It wouldn’t work, Vimes, you know that. I know too much, I would end up changing history. Or do you trust me not to get involved? Quite apart from all that: Madam would know. In your reality, she lived.”

Vimes gritted his teeth. With a sudden heave of his body that almost dislodged Vetinari, he flopped over on his side and faced the man. “What do _you_ want?” he demanded. “Tell me. Because I can’t… this is a choice I can’t make.”

Vetinari blinked. He touched the back of Vimes’ hand with his fingertips and opened his mouth. For a moment, Vimes had the feeling that there were two of him, and only one of him made the right decision. And then, it was done.

When the note arrived from Miss Susan, they were ready. Vimes had seen Vetinari kneel over Wuffles’ basket the day before, and later a small bundle had been carried into the garden, where one of the Dark Clerks dug a hole in the ground. At the Watch House, Vimes’ paperwork was done, his breastplate was polished, and he carried a dagger that Vetinari had lent him: a sleek, perfectly balanced instrument of death. Sweeper smiled an innocent little smile, Qu grumbled, and there was a Hublandish-looking boy there who made the mandala swirl in a mad dance. Vimes’ body was getting used to the sensation of travelling through time; he was barely disoriented when he landed on a night in May thirty years ago. They had agreed to meet in Twinkle Street near Lawn’s house. When he arrived, Vimes looked into the shadows until he spotted the one that was deeper than it should have been.

Vetinari stepped out of a completely different doorway next to him. Vimes jumped.

The Assassin flashed a smile. “Shall we, commander?”

Vimes knew exactly when ‘John Keel’ would be returning to his lodgings, because he had been him a mere week ago. This John Keel would never arrive; he would be intercepted and replaced. Vimes stalked the alleys around Twinkle Street. The beast was screaming. He had to tug it back on its chain to stop himself from running after Vetinari. It was too late; they had made the decision and they had to get through with it or the future would be lost forever. Too many things had been messed with. He’d only agreed to it, because technically it was he, _Vimes_ , who was being killed, which made it practically suicide. A man had the right to self-slaughter.

Only it wasn’t him killing himself. He’d sent a bloody Assassin to do the job.

And it wasn’t _him_ who was being killed. It was John Keel – not the original John Keel, but _a_ John Keel nevertheless, and he had not given his consent to any of this. Nevermind that he would agree to it a few days later. At this time, in this place, John Keel was a murder victim, and Vimes had his blood on his hands.

Vetinari materialised in the mouth of the alley. “It’s done,” the Assassin said.

There and then – _here and now_ – Vimes could’ve stabbed him.

Vimes had never killed a lover. That was what Vetinari was, after those few surreal days in the pocket of time, and it was more than Vimes could bear. He clasped the silver cigar case that Sweeper had returned to him and thought of his wife having his child somewhere in the future that he was about to save. In the other hand, he clasped the Assassin’s dagger. A surplus individual, this is what Vetinari was. And it wasn’t as if he ceased to exist. Vetinari would be waiting for him in his future. The same man, shaped by a different trouser leg.

Another memory surfaced from the depth of his mind: of 71-hour Ahmed who was policeman and executioner in one, because his beat was the desert and there was no law there apart from him. Lost in the wastelands of Time, Vimes understood for the first time. Vetinari, for his part, had always understood, and he accepted it.

The events unfolded. Samuel Vimes slipped back into the role of John Keel, punched Lord Rust, defended the barricade, destroyed Big Mary, and saw his men fall and die under the crossbow bolts and sword strikes of Carcer’s thugs.

Time stopped. The monks arrived. John Keel died[6]. Vimes grabbed Carcer and – slammed down on the Library floor. In the nude.

Hours later, he held his son in his arms. It had all been worth it. Sam Vimes cried, face buried in his wife’s lap.

Carcer caught up with him at the cemetery of Small Gods. “You’ll _hang_ , Carcer,” Vimes hissed. “I’ll drag you in front of… Vetinari.” He swallowed, memories of something that now _never happened_ flooding his brain.

Carcer stumbled, and Vimes kicked his legs from under him. “The machine ain’t broken, Carcer. The machine is waiting for you,” he said, tearing a sleeve off the man’s own shirt and fashioning it into a crude binding for his ankles. The city will kill you dead. The proper wheels’ll turn. It’ll be fair, I’ll make sure of that. Afterwards you won’t be able to say you didn’t have a fair trial. Won’t be able to say a thing, haha. I’ll see to that, too…” He stood back.

“Good evening, your grace,” said Lord Vetinari. Vimes spun around.

Vetinari emerged from the shadow, taking on shape as he walked towards Vimes. It was as if tiny specks of blackness swirled and merged to form the black-clad figure that loomed in front of Vimes. His hair was shorter, he wore a short beard, and he walked with a cane.

Vimes’ mouth went dry. His finger itched. When he glanced down, he saw a red speck shimmer on his skin.

“How long were you there?” he snapped at Vetinari.

“Oh… some little while,” said the Patrician. “Like you, I prefer to come alone and… contemplate.”

Vimes welcomed the wave of anger like an old friend. Here and now, he could pour out his rage, and there was nothing the Patrician could do but listen and _heed_.

“Well, then,” said Vetinari, after all that had to be said had been said. “Afterwards we could-”

“Afterwards I’m going home to my family for a while,” said Vimes quickly, before- Before _what_? What could he possibly have replied to what was very definitely not a proposition?

“Good! Well said,” said Vetinari, not missing a beat. “You have a gift, I have noticed, for impressive oratory.” And Vimes heard the gentle note of warning – and something else, something that made his skin prickle and his blood rush through his veins – as he added, “At this time, commander, and in this place.”

Memories and pasts: Vimes had too many, and many of them false. But he _remembered_ , and he clung to the memory like he’d clung to the cigar case, like he’d clung to his badge: There had been another time, there had been another place. Had he chosen differently, they might have become real.

The first thing that Sergeant Vimes did on the first day of the rest of his life was buying the troll Detritus from the landlord of the Mended Drum. He removed the chains, threw them at the scowling man’s feet and told the troll to follow him. The voice of authority went straight to the little spot in the troll’s brain that was still functional and activated a switch. Detritus looked at Vimes, really looked at him, and said: “Yessir.”

He followed him through the streets of Ankh-Morpork to Easy Street, cutting a swathe in the teeming Ankh-Morpork populace who stopped to gawk at a massive troll walking through the city in broad daylight, bold as brass. Vimes knocked at the door, pushed past the footman, who stepped aside with great alacrity at the sight of the troll knuckling in Vimes’ wake, and introduced him to Vetinari, who didn’t so much as blink.

“Are you sure this is the future you want, your lordship?” he growled. Yesterday he’d spent several hours in his lordship’s bedroom, and his blood was still buzzing from the experience. This was becoming a habit, and Vimes wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It had been all well and good (for a given value of ‘good’) when he was temporarily trapped in a time pocket that didn’t hold his future. The decision had changed everything. Now, he was Vetinari’s lover, or Vetinari was his lover, and it was not what Vimes had wanted from life.

Vimes had always vaguely suspected that Detritus had been a slab user himself. The troll’s campaign against drugs had been just a little bit too personal. He wasn’t sure how troll detox worked, but he was _damned_ if he wasn’t going to find out. To this end, he offloaded the problem on Vetinari, who had a large house with cellars and a squad of Dark Clerks (or possibly footmen) at his disposal and was therefore perfectly equipped for dealing with a troll going cold rock.

“I called in a meeting of the committee for tonight, commander,” Vetinari said from where he was seated at his desk. Detritus had wandered into a corner of the room, where he stood staring moodily at nothing with his knuckles resting on the ground.

Ah yes, the committee. Vetinari had loved committees. Usually, though, he made other people form one, while he got on with the real and important work in the meantime. But these were unusual circumstances.

“What about the men on the Watch?” Vetinari asked and added: “ _Please_ sit down, commander.”

“I can’t be sure of them yet,” Vimes said and remained standing in front of Vetinari’s desk. It was a matter of pride. “And it’s ‘sergeant’, your lordship.”

“You won’t stay a sergeant for long.”

“I am a sergeant now, sir.”

Vetinari sighed. “I realise that you enjoy this little roleplay, Vimes. However, it would be so much more efficient if you just discussed it with me without, as one says, playing silly buggers.”

Vimes was unimpressed. Vetinari was one to talk. His Genuan accent always became more pronounced when he affected Morporkian vernacular.

“It would be… advantageous if we had the Watch on our side,” Vetinari said. “This isn’t going to be a coup. I am not a fool who wishes to seize power by force. There has to be a transition.”

“There’s going to be a revolution,” Vimes said. “There’re always fools who think a revolution’s what the city needs. You won’t be able to stop them.”

“But we can ensure damage control.” Vetinari rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What do you intend to do with the-”

“His name,” Vimes said in a low voice, “is Detritus.”

“With Detritus?” Vetinari asked, without missing a beat.

“I am gonna enlist him in the Watch, sir.”

“Oh, good.”

Vimes stepped to the desk, leaned in, bracing himself on his knuckles, and said: “Detritus was one of my best officers, your lordship.”

In the old days – in the other trouser leg – Vetinari would’ve stared at his hands until he removed them. But times – ahaha! – had changed. Vetinari was no longer in the position to boss Vimes’ hands around; he could merely ask them nicely if he needed them to do something.

“I dispatched the letters to Überwald,” Vetinari said. “It will take a while, naturally, but I believe you will learn about the whereabouts of your officers in due course.”

“I need to find out what happened to Carrot too. He was from Copperhead.”

Vetinari made a note. “There might be a witch who could help.”

Vimes nodded.

“That would be all for now, sergeant,” Vetinari said. “Until tonight. And, Vimes: plain clothes, please.”

“Sah! I’ll bring my hooded cloak. Is there a password?”

“Oh, do go away, Vimes, there’s a good watchman.”

There were shadows. There was a circle of armchairs. There was ominous candlelight and shapes moving on its fringes, keeping their faces away from the light, even though everyone knew where everyone else was. There was Rosie Palm, and there were Dr Downey and Dr Whiteface[7], and Queen Molly. Miss Susan suddenly materialised in their midst without having apparently used the door. She looked taller than she’d done in her classroom, and her hair was far from sensible. Ronnie Soak came in wiping his hands on his apron and put a bottle of milk on the table. “Since you don’t drink booze, Sir Samuel.” He winked. There were others too, some whom Vimes knew, others whom he didn’t. Eventually, the only non-human member knuckled in. The Librarian swung himself into a chair and held out a packet of peanuts to the others. Vimes rolled his eyes. Murky backrooms, hushed whispers, shadowy figures and a conspiracy to un-elect the Patrician. How could he, Sam Vimes, have ended up as one of _Them_? He should’ve gone home to his wife, who no longer existed, and to his child, who never would. There could’ve been another time, there could’ve been another place. Had he chosen differently, they might have remained real.

 

[1] It wasn’t the only thing that did.

[2] Though to be fair, he’d been upgraded from pawn to knight and duke.

[3] It had been a harrowing experience.

[4] They weren’t the only thing that… etc. etc.

[5] The troll war beat. Whoever heard it would be dead within ten minutes, and Vimes didn’t completely rule out that this was a possibility in the present situation.

[6] Again. The man had more deaths than Reg Shoe.

[7] Whose face, if taken at face value, couldn’t be concealed in the shadows due to the white make-up that covered it. But Vimes, who by his own admission was a suspicious bastard and not a clown, knew that anyone could slap on any old paint.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Amends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13503546) by [Trotzkopf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trotzkopf/pseuds/Trotzkopf)




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